ESPN host Stephen A. Smith defended his trip to the White House to meet with President Donald Trump during an episode of "The View" Wednesday, telling the co-hosts he wouldn't apologize for sitting down with the president.

Co-host Sunny Hostin asked Smith, "He has this history of racial bias that is so clear. Did you think meeting with him, that you got anywhere?"

"I don't know. We'll find out, but he’s the president of the United States, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try," he said. "And the reality is I’m just speaking from a constitutional perspective in that regard. 

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"And it points to a bigger issue. There are so many people that have this mentality, ‘Why even waste time talking to him?’ Whether you like him or not, he’s the president of the United States of America. He’s not going away until 2028. At least. He’s not going away."

Smith met with Trump, comedian Bill Maher and Kid Rock at the White House Oct. 15.

Hostin raised the possibility that Trump could be impeached after the midterm elections, but Smith rejected the idea. 

"I think you’re going to have a situation where the Republicans are going to maintain the Senate," Smith said. "They’ll probably lose the House. So, you’ll get folks to impeach him, but then they’ll step in and save him, and it will be an ongoing continuous thing. 

"And don’t get me started with that because I get disgusted with all that pomp and circumstance. I’m so sick and tired of us acting like that’s going to do something. He’s not going away until 2028.

"You’re going to have to deal with him," he continued. "And when it comes to getting things done, I’m all about exhausting every means and every measure to try to do what’s in the best interest of our community. I’m not apologizing for that to anybody."

The co-hosts told Smith they had invited Trump onto the show, but, on Tuesday, co-host Ana Navarro said there was "no way in hell" she would meet with the president.

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"It’s easy for the cast of ‘The View’ to attack people for meeting with President Trump or crow about how they would never take a meeting with him," Nicholas Fondacaro, associate editor of the Media Research Center's NewsBusters, told Fox News Digital in a statement about the exchange. 

"One, they’ll never be asked. Two, they’re not counted on by anyone to be a champion of their cause.

"It’s clear that ‘The View’ truly believe him to be the bumbling racist caricature that they and the rest of the liberal media paint him to be to their viewers," he continued. "They were visibly shocked to learn that Trump seemed to hear him out and called him a few days later to hear his argument again before he met with others about the HBCUs issue."

Navarro also pressed Smith on the meeting and questioned whether he pushed back on the president.

The ESPN host said he pressed Trump several times regarding the war in Iran and added that Maher grilled the president during the meeting as well.

"The only other thing I would add is I’m kind of disappointed that you’re asking whether or not I pushed back because that shows me that you’re not watching my SiriusXM show enough because I push back on Trump all the time," Smith said.

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Kid Rock spoke on "Fox & Friends" about the meeting Friday.

"Last night, I'm having dinner at the White House with the president, Bill Maher and Stephen A. Smith. We all agreed socialism and communism has no place to have a foothold in our government," he said, before referring to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Asked how the dinner went, Kid Rock said the group had a great conversation.

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"It was epic," he said. "And the thing that was the greatest — there's so many points, I could do an hour on it — is that, you know, two Democrats, two Republicans sit down, break bread, have laughs, talk about, have tough conversations on a lot of the issues."

"The View" co-host Ana Navarro said Tuesday there was "no way in hell" that she would meet with President Donald Trump.

During a segment on the ABC daytime talk show, the panel discussed Trump's Thursday night dinner with comedian Bill Maher, sports commentator Stephen A. Smith and musician Kid Rock at the White House. This led to a discussion among the co-hosts about whether they would accept an invitation to dinner with the president.

While co-hosts Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin, who previously worked for Trump, said they would accept an invitation, Navarro responded, "Hell to the no."

"There is no way in hell, no way in hell I would want to break bread or be in the same room with a man whose administration is hunting Latinos," Navarro said.

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"It’s not 'Lady and the Tramp.' You’re not going to slurp pasta," Haines replied jokingly.

"No, but, listen, stop, this is not funny!" Navarro responded. "What he’s doing to Latinos is criminal."

She clarified that she had no interest in meeting with Trump because it would make "zero difference" to his administration.

"I know that he has seen the polls of Latinos going against him, that he’s lost 50 points of support with Latinos, and his administration has doubled down on their cruelty," Navarro said. "They are killing Latinos, chasing them, hunting them, racially profiling them, torturing them, sending them to places in far-off Africa. You think I’m going to go share a meal with him?" 

Haines pointed out that Navarro has met with and questioned other Republican politicians, including Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., but Navarro suggested that there were other ways to push back against political figures.

"You know who’s going to hold him accountable? The people who are going to vote in the midterm elections," Navarro said.

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Co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg agreed with Navarro, saying there was no real reason to sit down with Trump.

"He’s the criminal-in-chief," Hostin said. "I think that he would not listen, and I don’t think this is a normal presidency. I think it’s abhorrent, and I think it’s abnormal. I think what he’s doing to Latinos, I think what he’s doing to African Americans, I think what he’s doing to the LGBTQ+ community, I think the fact that he’s enriching himself, it’s so disgusting and abhorrent. I don't think I would meet with him." 

"This is a man who started out racially profiling people," Goldberg said. "It’s not the first time he’s done it. He’s done it for years, and I cannot, in good conscience, try to reason with someone who has decided that I’m barely human." 

Fox News Digital reached out to ABC and the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response from either.

Despite several co-hosts' refusal to meet with Trump, fellow co-host Joy Behar said in a New York Magazine interview published Friday that she would like to see the president appear on the show. 

"I’d love Donald Trump to take the heat," Behar said. 

Vice President JD Vance appeared on "The View" in June and sparred with the co-hosts on issues including immigration. 

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In an interview with "Fox & Friends" Friday, Kid Rock praised the dinner with Trump, Maher and Smith, saying the group had a great conversation despite having different political leanings.

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"It was epic," he said. "And the thing that was the greatest, there's so many points, I could do an hour on it, is that, you know, two Democrats, two Republicans sit down, break bread, have laughs, talk about, have tough conversations on a lot of the issues."

"The View" co-host Sunny Hostin revisited her widely-discussed 2024 question to former Vice President Kamala Harris during an event on Monday, calling the former Democratic presidential nominee's answer and refusal to distance herself from former President Joe Biden at the time "problematic."

Brian Teta, the talk show's executive producer and host of its "Behind the Table" podcast, selected the moment as Hostin's most memorable on the show. He said it was a "seminal moment" in the 2024 election cycle.

Hostin described the question as a "gift" and said she thought Harris would have to distance herself from Biden because of his approval ratings at the time. She also said "The View" was the perfect venue to ask the question, calling the liberal show's audience "her people."

"I actually thought the answer was going to be, you know, ‘We had a lot of wins in this administration. I was there for those wins, but I, as a woman of color, as a child of immigrants, as I have a different lived experience, and I intend to bring that lived experience with me into the White House. I will do this. I will do that. I will do this. I will do that. I will do that.’ That was what I was expecting. I was not expecting, 'Not a single thing comes to mind.' And I knew honestly when she said it that it was really problematic," Hostin said. 

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The co-hosts noted that the moment was discussed in books published after the 2024 election, including Harris' memoir, "107 Days," and was also featured in a political ad for President Donald Trump.

In "107 Days," Harris wrote that she had no idea she had just "pulled the pin on a hand grenade," with her answer to Hostin's question. She wrote that her staff was beside themselves.

"Stationed at various places around the set, my staff were beside themselves. Political operatives have an eye to see a moment, and I could kick myself for giving the other side that moment. During the commercial break, while I was having a bit of fun with some young students I’d noticed in the audience who were obviously playing hooky, offering to write notes to their teachers after the show, Opal [Vadhan] passed me a note from our team, telling me to return to that question and mention that a big difference would be that I would put a Republican in my cabinet," she wrote in her book.

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Teta and the co-hosts said they all knew her response was going to be a problem.

Co-host Ana Navarro said Harris' staff "ran" because staff members knew immediately that Harris needed to return to the question and address her answer.

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During the show on Friday, both Navarro and Haines said they wouldn't tell Harris not to run, but questioned if she would be the best option for the Democratic Party.

"If the Democrats want to win, I don't think she's the right candidate because I think the Democrats have been screaming for new energy. They've been saying we need something new to combat this. This would be her third time on this ballot. From the first time when she didn't ... she was out really early when she ran, and then the time with Biden, this would be the third time. People are clamoring for fresh energy, and there's a lot of candidates," Haines said.

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Co-host Joy Behar has said on several occasions that she doesn't think the U.S. would elect a woman as president, citing Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's losses to Trump. She has said the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee should be a man if the party wants to win.

Hostin questioned whether president would be the right position for Harris during an April episode of "The View" and said she wished Harris had pursued a run for California governor.

"This goes right to the heart of what the Media Research Center has been arguing to the FCC about for months now. The View knowingly operates as a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party and for Democratic candidates," NewsBusters associate editor Nicholas Fondacaro told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Sunny openly admitted that her intention with the question was to help Kamala with what she felt was a layup question that would lead to a slam-dunk answer. This incident was an abuse of ABC's privileged access to the public broadcast spectrum."

"The View" co-hosts defended Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed over his comparison of questions about his family's alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood to scrutiny former President John F. Kennedy faced over his Catholic faith.

El-Sayed made the comparison during an "MS NOW Reports" interview on Saturday, likening questions about his family's alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood to scrutiny Kennedy faced over his Catholic faith.

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg highlighted an incident at a recent town hall when El-Sayed was asked whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed did so, but objected to the question, saying the audience member was "implicitly assuming that I’ll have dual loyalties."

"I liked what he said. He compared the question he received to John F. Kennedy's question because John F. Kennedy, as you know, was a Catholic, and in the days he was running that was a huge deal and people wanted to know ‘Are you going to listen to the Pope? Are you going to listen to the people?’" Goldberg said.

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"Yeah, because he was the first Catholic president," co-host Sunny Hostin agreed. "And I loved that comparison because, when John F. Kennedy was asked, he said, ‘I am not running to be a Catholic president, I'm running to be president who happens to be Catholic.’ And candidate El-Sayed said the same thing. ‘I am running to be a senator who happens to be Muslim.’"

"I think he does politics extremely well," she continued. "And there has been these constant Islamophobic — these Islamophobic comments around his candidacy. Trump called him a jihadist. I mean, this is just, I think it's out of line. I think it's out of pocket for our country to be a country where all religions aren't welcome. I think that it's really despicable the way he's been treated."

Concerns about El-Sayed's family's alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood emerged after social media posts uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon showed El-Sayed's half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, described her family's history with the organization.

In one 2012 post, Abdelhadi described a conversation with her and El-Sayed's mother, Fatten Elkomy, about her involvement with the organization during college in Egypt, saying, "Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect."

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Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin noted how quickly El-Sayed disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, but said she was still troubled by his response to an antisemitic terror attack in Michigan, arguing that such concerns cannot be disregarded as "Islamophobic." She also pointed to his past campaigning with far-left streamer Hasan Piker.

Fellow co-host Sara Haines argued, "The comparison to JFK isn't quite an equitable comparison, because when you question his loyalty based on his Catholicism, that's different than asking a question about reported ties to a terrorist organization."

She added that while the reported ties involved El-Sayed's family, not El-Sayed himself, the fact that people were framing concern about the Muslim Brotherhood as Islamophobia was making the entire conversation worse.

Co-host Ana Navarro argued that concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood were overblown.

"The Muslim Brotherhood is practically defunct in Egypt. That's like asking him to denounce bell-bottoms," she said.

"To me, this is a binary choice. Do I want somebody that's going to push back on Trump or do I want someone that's gonna rubber-stamp Trump?" Navarro asked. "Well, I want something that's going to demand accountability, that is going to demand oversight, and that's to pushback on the abuses of power that are going on in this country by this administration right now."

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Human rights attorney Brooke Goldstein, executive director of The Lawfare Project and founder of the #EndJewHatred movement, spoke to Fox News Digital about the segment and criticized Navarro for downplaying the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Nobody asked El-Sayed about his faith," Goldstein said. "He was asked about the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Egyptian and Jordanian chapters were designated as foreign terrorist entities by the Treasury Department this year for materially supporting Hamas, and whose Lebanese chapter was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. Hamas even describes itself as the Brotherhood’s wing — and clearly neither the Brotherhood nor Hamas is 'defunct.'" 

"The question El-Sayed deflected — the comparison to Kennedy is inapt because Kennedy actually did answer the question, to a room full of Protestant ministers — is about national security concerns, not religious ones," she continued. "The Kennedy comparison is nothing more than a deflection from unanswered questions about a designated terrorist organization."

"The co-hosts of ‘The View’ are missing the point," Goldstein added. "JFK faced religious prejudice. Questions about Abdul El-Sayed’s alleged family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood raise a different concern: where does a candidate’s loyalty lie, with the United States and its constitutional values, or with a foreign terrorist organization?"

"The evidence cited to raise these concerns is compelling enough to warrant serious scrutiny and direct answers," she said. "Voters have every right to demand transparency when potential connections to Islamist movements are questioned. National security is not bigotry, and invoking discrimination should not end legitimate debate." 

"Anytime there’s serious questions into somebody’s affiliation with a terrorist group, they claim religious prejudice," Goldstein continued. "Asking somebody about their ties to a terrorist organization is anti-Islam, what then, is pro-Islam?"

"Meanwhile, DSA candidates are advancing an anti-Western ideological agenda that deserves far more scrutiny. Their radical socialist policies and hostility toward traditional American values risk weakening the institutions and freedoms that made this country exceptional," she said. 

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Goldstein cited rioting in France as an example of what can happen if such issues aren't taken seriously. 

"France is a warning of what can happen when progressive ideology, failed integration policies, and inadequate responses to Islamist extremism collide," she said. "America must not follow that path by handing power to DSA radicals who put ideology ahead of national interests."