Whoopi Goldberg's Trump Warning Goes Viral

Footage of Whoopi Goldberg issuing a warning of what she foresees will happen to the U.S. if Donald Trump is reelected as president has gone viral on social media.

Trump, who was president between 2017 and 2021, is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, which will see him face off again against 2020 opponent and incumbent President Joe Biden this November.

Following his defeat in 2020, Trump baselessly said that the election had been stolen from him via widespread fraud. Three years ago, a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to stop Congress certifying the result of the 2020 election and the victory of Biden.

Former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, served on the House select committee that investigated the riot, along with former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, and seven other Democratic representatives. In December 2022, the committee published an 845-page report that said the former president was personally responsible for the riot and recommended he face criminal charges.

Several months later, in August 2023, Trump was indicted on four counts by the Department of Justice in relation to the riot, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pled not guilty and has said that the case against him is politically motivated.

Cheney, who has been amongst the most prominent GOP critics of Trump, made an appearance on ABC's The View on Wednesday, where co-host Goldberg urged her to ditch the GOP and run on a third-party ticket.

"Would you ever consider being the conduit to that third party?" Goldberg asked Cheney. "Because I don't know if the Republican Party as we knew it will survive this. Because if [Trump] ever gets in again we'll never have anymore elections—there will be no more. He will stop it, and he's very clear about that. He wants to be dictator for life. So I wonder would ever consider, please, would you?"

While Cheney said that she hadn't made a decision about a potential run, she said: "I think that the Republican Party itself is clearly so caught up in this cult of personality that it's very hard to imagine that the party can survive."

Footage of Goldberg's comments about Trump was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by supporters and detractors alike, with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, an avowed Trump supporter, counting himself among them.

Kirk captioned the clip with Goldberg's "dictator for life" comment. As of press time, the video clip has been viewed more than 800,000 times.

While serving in Congress, Cheney was among the 10 House Republicans who voted in support of impeaching Trump after the riot.

Amid the fallout, Trump faces legal challenges that seek to remove him from the ballot in several states, with two having already barred his name from primary voters' consideration. The lawsuits argue that Trump is ineligible to run under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars officials who have sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution from holding office if they engaged in insurrection.

Maine became the second state after Colorado to remove the former president from its 2024 ballot, preventing him from participating in its primary in March.

Trump has maintained that he did not engage in an insurrection and has accused those filing lawsuits against him of attempting election interference. The former president has also filed an appeal against the decision, which the U.S. Supreme Court said it will take up. Oral arguments are set to begin on February 8.

Cheney, who lost her seat in the 2020 midterm primaries, praised Colorado and Maine's efforts to remove Trump from the primary ballot, saying that there's "no question" his actions on January 6 fall within the language of the 14th Amendment.

"I don't believe he should be part of our political process," she told Dartmouth College students last Friday. "And this is a process that will go through the courts and that we'll see sort of how that unfolds. But there's no question in my mind that his actions clearly constituted an offense that is within the language of the 14th Amendment."

Cheney also issued a warning about Trump ahead of the upcoming election, adding her belief that Trump would refuse to hand over the reins of power if elected to a second term.

"He won't leave office. He already tried not to leave office once. So I think there's a lot of living in a fantasy world that's going on with Republicans telling themselves, 'Look, we'll vote for him, it won't be so bad.' It may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast. It will be that bad," the former congresswoman said.

Cheney also said on Friday that Trump's alleged actions that day "threaten the very foundations of our democracy," while urging New Hampshire voters to reject him in the state's first-in-the-nation presidential primary later this month.

"In a little over two weeks, when you in New Hampshire go to the polls, the world will be watching. And so, New Hampshire, I ask you this: speak for us all," Cheney said. "Show the world that we will defeat the plague of cowardice sweeping through the Republican Party."

During an interview with CBS Sunday Morning's John Dickerson, which was posted to X last month, Cheney was asked by the host: "You say Donald Trump, if he is reelected, it will be the end of the Republic. What do you mean?"

"He's told us what he will do," Cheney responded. "It's very easy to see the steps that he will take. People who say, well, if he's elected it's not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances, don't fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted. One of the things that we see happening today is sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States."

In Cheney's recently released book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, she writes about the upcoming presidential election.

"We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic," she wrote. "As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution."

In December 2022, Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden in a rant on his social media platform, Truth Social.

"Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?" Trump said. "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."

Reacting to Cheney's book, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, told Newsweek via email: "Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper.

"These are nothing more than completely fabricated stories because President Trump is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican nominee and the strongest candidate to beat Crooked Joe Biden. Liz clearly suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome and needs to address the underlying issues in her own personal life."