Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host of The View, cautioned her colleagues not to demonize ICE agents or military personnel during a panel discussion on the Los Angeles protests and troop deployments, arguing they were simply following orders issued by the nation’s elected leadership.
At a Glance
- Griffin emphasized that ICE and military personnel are not partisan actors but government employees executing official commands.
- Whoopi Goldberg responded by comparing such reasoning to authoritarian history, warning against the “just following orders” defense.
- Sunny Hostin argued the troop deployment marked a dangerous overreach of executive power.
- Griffin noted that many service members disagree with the orders they carry out but are bound by duty.
- The segment aired during national controversy over Trump’s federal deployment of troops to LA.
The Debate on The View
In a tense exchange aired on June 11, Griffin urged her co-hosts to resist vilifying public servants caught in political crossfire. She stated, “They’re following orders from the commander-in-chief… that’s not to say they agree with them”. She added that many ICE and military personnel serve across administrations with no control over the policies they are tasked with implementing.
Sunny Hostin pushed back, saying the show should not “whitewash what’s happening,” calling the deployment an erosion of civil liberties and branding it a “militarized response to civilian unrest.” Goldberg agreed and likened blind obedience to historical abuses of power, stating, “That’s what they said in Germany.”
Implications for Civil-Military Relations
Griffin’s defense of ICE and military personnel comes as the U.S. military is increasingly pulled into domestic conflicts. With more than 4,000 National Guard and Marine forces now stationed across Los Angeles in response to immigration-related protests, the question of accountability looms large.
The conversation highlighted how quickly public opinion and political media can shift from criticizing policy to targeting those tasked with its enforcement. Griffin’s position seeks to reframe the conversation: critique the policy, not the individual uniformed agents bound by it.
