“The View” has hired Alyssa Farah Griffen, a former staffer in the Trump/Pence administration who has a loing history of spouting conspiracy theories and right wing lies, notes Media Matters:
The daughter of right-wing conspiracy theorist and WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah, Alyssa Farah Griffin got her start as a so-called “special Washington correspondent” for her father’s notorious and discredited website. Her thin publication history for WorldNetDaily was standard fare for the fringe outlet, echoing right-wing talking points to attack Democratic officials and the mainstream media while promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. (It must be noted that Farah Griffin told The View earlier in 2022 that her father boycotted her wedding over her comments about January 6.)
Farah Griffin’s tenure at the White House was marked by deception and failure. She was a key figure on the team that mismanaged the White House’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and she was part of Donald Trump’s misinformation campaign ahead of the presidential election. Farah Griffin attacked the presidential debate commission for “trying to weigh the scales” to advantage Joe Biden after Trump’s positive COVID-19 test forced the cancellation of in-person debates, and she defended Trump after he asked the Proud Boys militia to “stand back and stand by” amid threats of violence ahead of the election. (Members of the group were later involved in the January 6 insurrection.) On Election Day, Farah Griffin claimed election officials in Pennsylvania were “putting their thumb on the scale” to advantage Biden.
Even after resigning from the administration, Farah Griffin continued running interference for Trump. She defended his attempt to interfere with the election results in Georgia, and on CNN she pushed back against Trump’s historic second impeachment, which she called a “charade,” while arguing that Trump should resign instead.
Farah Griffin, who would be following in the footsteps of the likes of Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Meghan McCain as a pity hire “permanent conservative co-host”, has already caused issues for the show, as The Daily Beast reported that frequent View guest Wanda Sykes pulled out, with a show insider telling The Daily Beast, “She didn’t want to be part of helping a Trumper launder her reputation.”
HuffPost noted some of the articles Farah Griffin wrote for WorldNetDaily:
An April 2008 article creatively reinterpreted a debate over Internet content filters on public-access computers as being solely about pornography.
A February 2010 article falsely claimed that a New York Times article on a controversial speaker at the conservative confab CPAC said that the speech “turned racist”; in fact, the Times reported that the speech used “racial stereotypes.”
A June 2010 article repeated misleading right-wing attacks on Elena Kagan after her nomination as a Supreme Court justice.
A March 2013 article went the anti-vaxxer route, as Farah — billed at this point as a “special Washington correspondent for WND” — fearmongered about the “thousands of adverse reactions” and “serious side effects” of the cancer-preventing human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil. She also understated the effectiveness of the vaccine.
(Sources: Media Matters, The Daily Beast, HuffPost, Photo Credit: ABC-TV)