Whoopi Goldberg is reportedly "livid" over ABC's decision to suspend her from The View and is threatening to quit the talk show for good after her comments about the Holocaust prompted outrage earlier this week.
The Sister Act star came under fire after declaring the Holocaust "isn't about race" when discussing the banning of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus - a story about the Nazi regime - by a Tennessee school district.
Goldberg asserted the systematic, state-sponsored genocide of six million Jews by a German regime who believed themselves racially superior was instead about "man's inhumanity to man", adding that it occurred between "two groups of white people".
The television personality allegedly now feels "humiliated" by the powers that be at ABC after she followed their advice to publicly apologise for her remarks.
"She feels ABC executives mishandled this," a source told the New York Post.
"She followed their playbook. She went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and then apologised again on The View the next day.
"Her ego has been hurt and she's telling people she's going to quit," the source continued. "Suspension from The View is like getting suspended from (reality TV network) Bravo. The bar is very low."
During her appearance on The Late Show, Goldberg expressed remorse for the anger her words had caused, but also seemingly doubled down on some of her sentiments.
"I was saying you can't call this racism, this was evil. This wasn't based on the skin," Goldberg said of her earlier comments.
"Most of the Nazis were white people, and most of the people they were attacking were white people."
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Goldberg's interview with Colbert was taped before she released her written apology on Twitter, in which she said she "stood corrected" and said she was "sorry for the hurt" she had caused.
The following day, Goldberg invited the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, to appear on The View and educate her on anti-Semitism and why her words were problematic.
Goldberg opened that show by apologising again and correcting her previous statement, saying: "[The Holocaust] is indeed about race, because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race."
"Words matter, and mine are no exception. I regret my comments," she said.
Following the news of Goldberg's suspension - which was confirmed in a statement from ABC News President Kim Godwin - CNN reporter Oliver Darcy shared a screenshot on Twitter of what he says was the full note that Godwin sent ABC staffers about Goldberg.
Godwin called Goldberg's comments "misinformed, upsetting and hurtful", saying decisions like the one she made to suspend Goldberg were "never easy, but necessary".
"Just last week I noted that the culture at ABC News is one that is driven, kind, inclusive, respectful and transparent. Whoopi's comments do not align with those values."
Godwin noted that Goldberg had previously shown through her actions over many years that she understood the horrors of the Holocaust, "but words matter and we must be cognisant of the impact our words have".
