Vice President Kamala Harris's Friday interview on The View was disrupted and cut short by a COVID scare that turned out to be based on false-positive test results for two of the show's co-hosts. And now her team is asking a lot of questions.
As CNN is reporting, Harris's interview had been planned for a while, and ended up being more limited than it was supposed to be. That is due to the last-minute scramble that had to happen when co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro had COVID tests come back positive, apparently just minutes before they and Harris were set to go on set.
The trouble, Harris's office now says, is that they were told all the show's co-hosts had tested negative as of the night before. Part of the agreement to have Harris on the show unmasked was that all the co-hosts had negative PCR tests less than 24 hours before the show, and producers allegedly gave Harris's office the "all clear" on the testing requirement night before. So why were test results just arriving minutes before air time?
All the show's hosts are reportedly tested "at least" twice weekly — though Navarro told CNN's Anderson Cooper that she is typically tested just weekly.
The debacle meant that producers had to set up a remote interview location in the building for Harris, who then appeared in a split screen with co-host Joy Behar for a truncated interview.
CNN reports that Harris's team remains "deeply concerned" about the incident, and says that The View team has not been forthcoming enough about how things unfolded.
In the end, Hostin and Navarro took multiple subsequent tests that came back negative, and those two results from Friday morning were deemed to be false positives. As NPR reported, Behar and co-host Sara Haines also took multiple tests over the weekend that were all negative.
Hostin told NPR that her husband, who is a surgeon, had to be pulled from surgery as a precautionary measure when her test result was revealed, and her kids were pulled out of school.
"It really was uncomfortable for my results to be released publicly before I even knew what was going on," Hostin said.
Navarro said she was "flabbergasted" by the situation, and she was subsequently dragged into a Twitter fight over it by Donald Trump Jr. The former president's moron son tweeted Friday, "Given the Ana Navarro news, I think it's time for a national conversation about the dangers of Covid-19 and obesity."
Navarro lashed back, referring to Donald Trump Sr.'s own COVID infection, "If you wanted to have a conversation about COVID and obesity, you could have had it last October."
Brian Teta, executive producer of The View, went on air Monday to apologize to Hostin and Navarro, and said the situation Friday, "led to some really awkward television that I'd like to have back if I could."
Previously: Kamala Harris Appearance On 'The View' Disrupted After Two Hosts Test Positive for COVID