NEW YORK — Elisabeth Hasselbeck left “The View” after a decade on Wednesday, showing no hard feelings toward her colleagues even though her political views made for some awkward and heated exchanges on the daytime chat fest over the years.
Her exit came less than 24 hours after it was announced that Hasselbeck will join Fox News Channel and the “Fox &Friends” morning show in September.
Fellow cast member Joy Behar joked about Hasselbeck being a “fish out of water” on the Fox show, which is popular with conservatives. Hasselbeck, who appeared at the Republican National Convention in 2008, usually found herself outnumbered on “The View” when she offered conservative political opinions.
On Wednesday, she thanked the show’s executive producer, Bill Geddie, for challenging her and telling her to “never be fearful of voicing my opinion.”
Hasselbeck warmly thanked all of her colleagues. She said she calculated that she spent some 3,000 days working with show creator Barbara Walters, an experience that was like a master’s class in communications and journalism.
She said Whoopi Goldberg was as loving as she was talented and that she had “an insane amount of respect” for Behar.
“I even like it when Joy has been able to throw a one-liner in and make me laugh even when I don’t want to,” she said.
Behar said their debates added excitement to the show and “we were never mad at each other.”
The ABC loses Behar this fall and Walters, its creator, is retiring from television next year.
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