In recent years, conservatives and many moderates have become increasingly appalled by the sheer amount of partisan defamation emanating from the co-hosts of The View, who mock, slander, and baselessly impugn the motivations of Republicans and other conservative-leaning Americans on a near-daily basis. From comparing Republican policies and rhetoric to those of Nazi Germany to stating that conservative women are like cockroaches voting for insecticide, to condemning Kansas City Chiefs football star Harrison Butker’s Catholic faith as “extremist” and “cultlike,” the ladies of The View have no shortage of anti-conservative vitriol—and the American people have taken note.
Behind the scenes, however, ABC executives are laughing hysterically because the real culprit in the network’s left-wing slander machine has yet to be identified by the conservative establishment. That man behind the curtain is none other than Brian Teta, the show’s executive producer.
Teta has served as The View’s executive producer since 2015 and has overseen some of the program’s most shocking anti-conservative moments, quietly lurking behind the scenes while the show’s six cohosts—Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Ana Navarro—take all the credit for the program’s anti-conservative defamation campaign.
Prior to joining The View, Teta worked on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2004 until the show’s conclusion in 2015. (During that timeframe, Letterman was notably embroiled in a blackmail scandal in which he faced accusations that he had engaged in sexual affairs with female employees.)
In the years since, Teta’s career in mudslinging has only escalated. By every indication, Teta has obsequiously toed the line of left-wing extremism in the show business, elevating hosts, guests, and talking points that reinforce progressive narratives while besmirching conservatives and smearing their priorities as evil, backward, or misinformed.
Teta said the quiet part out loud in a rare interview earlier this year. In an April conversation with Deadline, Teta insisted he would not “put people on [the show] to [spread] misinformation” – a popular liberal buzzword for any narrative the left doesn’t like. Meanwhile, he remained hesitant to comment on a prospective Trump appearance, claiming that any guests on The View representing the Trump campaign will be considered on a “case by case” basis.
Yet when asked about a Biden appearance, Teta enthusiastically said that his “hope” and “expectation” is that Biden (and Kamala Harris) would “be here during the election”—a virtual admission that he hand-picks guests and micromanages other programming to fit ABC’s leftist political goals.
But like many other corporate newsroom executives, Teta has never been a journalist and has no reportorial experience. Why, then, have Teta and others like him been charged with essentially running the news industry?
The ascension of figures like Teta to the top of the food chain at some of the nation’s leading news organizations has marked the inflection point of an increasingly activist corporate media whose sole intention is to hurt Republicans and attack their voters.
This phenomenon was notably brought to light at a fall GOP primary debate when Vivek Ramaswamy stopped the political world cold when he launched a scathing attack on the national corporate media. Ramaswamy said out loud what rank-and-file conservative voters have long known to be the truth.
“Think about who’s moderating this debate,” he said on the debate stage in November. “This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk—we’d have 10 times the viewership, asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about, and bring more people into our party.”
“We’ve got Kristen Welker here,” he continued. “Do you think the Democrats would actually hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They wouldn’t do it. And so the fact of the matter is, Kristen, I’m going to use this time—because this is actually about you and the media, and the corrupt media establishment—[to] ask you [about] the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real? Or was that Hillary Clinton’s made-up disinformation? Answer the question. Go.” The camera then panned to Welker, who awkwardly smiled and refused to answer Ramaswamy’s question as the crowd erupted in applause.
In taking this approach, Ramaswamy let a massive political genie out of the bottle and exposed the corporate media as the real opposition party in American politics.
Given this emerging dynamic on the American right—and given that executives like Teta continue to wield disproportionate amounts of power over American media consumption—it’s worth asking why the Republican Party is not leveling attacks against Teta and his left-wing corporate media allies.
The roadmap for holding the corporate media accountable can be found in former RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’s decision to officially suspend NBC News as a debate partner during the 2015 primaries thanks to the network’s long-established “petty and mean-spirited” bias against conservatives.
In the years since, however, the Republican establishment has too eagerly partnered with left-wing networks for their debates and other programming—granting corporate media executives like Teta a continued chance to deride Republican candidates, disparage Republican voters, and prop up left-wing narratives.
Less than five months out from Election Day, the GOP has a much-needed chance to target the corporate media and hold them accountable for contorting every major news story into an attack on Republicans—if they opt to take it.
“Every single day, no matter what the hosts say or do, there’s dozens of headlines afterwards,” Teta said in his April Deadline interview. “And I think politicians are aware of that, and sometimes like to make some headlines of their own by talking about us.”
Thankfully for him, Teta has thus far succeeded at staying out of the headlines while using the cohosts of The View as his avatars for activism. It’s now up to the GOP to get smart—and to let voters know who’s really responsible for ABC’s defamation campaign.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
