Turning Point USA, the high profile conservative college group that recently finished hosting its annual Student Action Summit in Florida, has sent a legal cease and desist letter to ABC after hosts on its female oriented daytime talk show “The View” called the activists Nazis.
The claim was made and advanced by at least two hosts of “The View” earlier this week, after a group of unknown men claiming to be neo-Nazis gathered outside the event venue and claimed they were expressing support for the mainstream conservative event.
TPUSA condemned the protesters for attempting to hijack their event, and the neo-Nazis were not allowed onto property controlled by TPUSA. Still, this did not stop hosts of “The View” from claiming that the organization run by Charlie Kirk embraced the anti-Semites.
Joy Behar began wading into legally murky territory by asserting “Neo-Nazis were out there in the front of the conference with anti-Semitic slurs and, you know, the Nazi swastika and a picture of a so-called Jewish person with exaggerated features, just like Goebbels did during the Third Reich. It’s the same thing, right out of that same playbook.”
Throughout their broadcast, Goldberg and other hosts then repeatedly read from a “legal notice” provided in commercial breaks.
“I’ve got a legal note,” said one host. “The conservative group, Turning Point USA, has condemned the group of neo-Nazis and said they have nothing to do with the organization.”
Goldberg then interjected, falsely, “But you let them in. You let them in and you knew who they were, so you are complicit.”
THREAD: Yesterday, @TheView & Whoopi Goldberg smeared and lied about TPUSA regarding an incident where supposed “nazis” showed up outside of the Student Action Summit. pic.twitter.com/9xonX9jC25
— Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) July 26, 2022
After the first legal notice was apparently marred by Goldberg’s interjection, the host was then forced to read a second legal notice live on the show.
“I would like to make a quick clarification about the neo-Nazis at the Turning Point event,” said Goldberg.
She continued, “My point was more metaphorical, you embraced them at your thing, I felt. They were not in the building.” Behar then compared TPUSA to the left wing militant group Antifa.
“We want to make sure, I know they were not in the building, but they were in the mix of people at the thing,” Goldberg claimed.
While they were forced by their legal department to correct two of these misrepresentations live on air, Whoopi continued to insist that TPUSA somehow welcomed “nazis” into our event “metaphorically.” pic.twitter.com/320UV0aH0G
— Turning Point USA (@TPUSA) July 26, 2022
In a cease and desist letter reported by the New York Post, the conservative student group used harsh language to condemn the network for the behavior of its hosts.
“The View hosts intentionally and falsely associated TPUSA with neo-Nazi protestors outside the event placing TPUSA in denigrating and false light and negatively impacting its public perception. Such action will not be tolerated,” in-house counsel Veronica Peterson wrote, according to the Post.
“Specifically, The View hosts insidiously and cavalierly stated that TPUSA ‘let [neo-Nazis] in’ to its SAS event, metaphorically ‘embrase[d] them’ [sic] and that neo-Nazis were ‘in the mix of people.’ The assertion that TPUSA is complicit or affiliated in any way with the neo-Nazi protesters outside the event is outlandish, false, defamatory, and disgraceful,” the letter continued, per the Post. “Even after Ms. Haines reluctantly read the TPUSA statement that it condemns the group of neo-Nazis and that the group had nothing to do with TPUSA, its event, or its student attendees, Ms. Goldberg continues the false tirade against TPUSA, asserting that somehow the organization and its attendees were ‘complicit’ and/or associated with the outside protest.”
The organization demanded an apology, and gave the network and hosts of “The View” until today to apologize before indicating they would seek further legal action.
“In cases where the communication is of such a nature that the court can presume as a matter of law that the communication will tend to degrade or disgrace the party defamed, special damages are presumed,” the letter said. “Therefore, TPUSA demands that ABC immediately cease and desist from further unlawfully defaming TPUSA, retract the defamatory statements identified above, and issue a public statement apologizing for and correcting the above defamatory and false statements.”
