Conservative radio host Guy Benson said on Thursday that “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg’s comparison of the U.S. to Iran is both “disgraceful” and “ignorant.”
Goldberg claimed on Wednesday that the treatment of black people in America is equally comparable to the human rights abuses that occur in Iran, particularly against women and gay people. Benson stated on “America’s Newsroom” that the “fabulously wealthy” co-host, whose net worth is an estimated $60 million, is completely out of touch from reality.
“I call that show a daily, national televised insane asylum for a reason. It’s hard to overstate the moral idiocy of what we just heard there from Whoopi Goldberg in particular,” Benson said. “So Alyssa Farah is making the point, correctly, that people are subjugated brutally by the Iranian regime and Whoopi’s like ‘oh, well, look at what we do here in the U.S. There are hate crimes here.’ Our government prosecutes hate crimes. They don’t commit them as a matter of course. For her to say ‘oh well, if you’re black in the United States in 2025, it’s basically the same as being a dissident or anyone in Iran, that is deeply, deeply ignorant.”
“Whoopi Goldberg, as a black woman, is one of the most fabulously wealthy people in the world. She gets up every morning, she rolls in to do an hour of poorly informed television, she collects a handsome paycheck and she lives her life however the heck she wants,” Benson continued. “Sounds pretty great. Compare that to the people who are slaughtered in the streets or imprisoned for years, beaten or executed for what they think or who they are in Iran. To make that comparison is disgraceful, but unfortunately it is par for the course on that program.”
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Since 1979, Iranian women have faced the threat of being fined, imprisoned or even flogged in the streets for violating the nation’s hijab rules. Iranian law does not criminalize marital rape and exempts husbands, fathers and grandfathers who assault or kill a female relative for allegedly dishonoring the family, according to Impact Iran.
Masha Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in the hospital in 2022 after being beaten by the “morality police” for violating the hijab regulations. Witnesses said that Amini was beaten in a police van which left her in a coma, which she never recovered from.
In some cases, Iran enforces the death penalty if same-sex couples engage in consensual sex and forces people to undergo torturous “conversion therapy,” according to Iran Human Rights. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif publicly endorsed the execution of gay people in 2019, stating that his country has “moral principles.”
Authorities in Iran also subject their detainees to torture, inadequate healthcare for torture-related injuries and unfair trials, according to Amnesty International. Torture methods have reportedly included flogging, stoning, crucifixion, blinding and amputation.
Goldberg claimed that these actions are the same as black people getting lynched in the U.S., despite that being a hate crime and punishable by law. Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin disputed her claims, stating that living in the U.S. is “nothing like” Iran.
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