“We did that to see who was talking,” Goldberg said, nodding to Joy Behar at the Hot Topics table.


The legendary actress, often at the helm of the Whoopi Goldberg War Room—traditionally focused on outward offensives targeting everything from controversial topics to unruly cohosts—has revealed that the operation once launched a covert intelligence mission aimed at exposing an internal gossip mole at The View.

The 68-year-old moderator and Ghost star shared this insider story during Thursday’s Hot Topics segment, where she and her cohosts were discussing the dangers of gossip in both social and professional circles.

“You know what I like to do? I like to try to catch a gossip. Because what you can do is you can plant false information and see if it makes its way around,” conservative cohost and former Trump White House associate Alyssa Farah Griffin said, which jogged Goldberg’s memory that she, too, had orchestrated an undercover mission to expose a leaker at The View.

“We have done that, we have done that,” Goldberg reiterated, looking towards Joy Behar. “We did that to see who was talking. Yeah.”

Behar initially reacted with confusion before muttering an “Oh” to the audience, as if recalling a battlefield flashback.

“Now, you see, that’s a little bit of gossip I would like to know about,” legal expert Sunny Hostin quipped, prompting laughter from the audience just before the show cut to a commercial.

During the Meghan McCain era of the show, The View was plagued by a series of press leaks, including stories in Page Six that cited alleged backstage tensions between McCain and her cohosts. McCain eventually left the show in 2021, later criticizing the program and her former colleagues on her Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat podcast and in subsequent interviews.