The View had a sharp spike in viewership for last Thursday’s episode, which featured Donald Trump Jr. and senior adviser to the Trump presidential campaign Kimberly Guilfoyle.
The episode, which featured multiple instances of insults being hurled and raised voices, had an audience of slightly over 3 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. It was the show’s most-watched episode since April 26, 2019.
During the week before Trump and Guilfoyle’s appearance, The View had an average audience of 2.5 million viewers with 384,000 women in the key age demographic.
The show’s season average viewership is slightly above last week’s ratings, though only by a couple hundred thousand people. The View ranks fourth among all network and syndicated daytime talk shows and news programs, behind Dr. Phil, Live with Ryan and Kelly, and Ellen.
In one particularly heated moment, anchor Joy Behar confronted Trump about her father’s behavior and he responded by pointing out that “we have all done things that we regret” and specifically referenced a Halloween costume Behar wore decades earlier that resembled blackface.
Behar has described the costume as a “beautiful African woman” and added that her costume included “makeup that was a little bit darker than my skin,” but she argued that she has not worn blackface. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg defended Behar saying “she was not in blackface” and added that “being black, I recognize blackface.”
