The first “Hot Topic” of the day on Thursday’s (March 27) episode of The View was, once again, the matter of the Signal scandal and the subsequent spin/cover-up efforts by those involved in a group texting chain of top-tier Trump administration officials who accidentally included a journalist in a discussion of imminent attack plans in Yemen.

After reviewing clips of some of the official responses to the matter — including the White House’s press secretary accusing Democrats of “a misinformation campaign,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denying there was any classified information on the thread, Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying it was a “big mistake,” and Donald Trump himself denying any knowledge of whether the attack plans were classified at the time.

“Welcome back to the cat box, where they are just covering up as quickly as they can!” Whoopi Goldberg said, channeling the analogy she created the day before to compare the spin to a cat covering up its freshly-laid feces. “I’m kind of surprised about it, or maybe I’m crazy, but still not one Republican has called for anyone in this group to be fired. They love to fire people. What’s going on?”

“They think we’re stupid,” Joy Behar quickly replied. “They really think we’re stupid. They’re saying this is not classified information, am I correct? Well, if you’re going to drop a bomb on a country, I would think that’s classified… There is a simple notion that Americans just don’t understand that they’re lying about everything, and we’re not that dumb.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin then went on to roll a separate bit of footage in which Trump admitted he had not yet been briefed on the four American soldiers who are missing in Lithuania and noted that this is the consequence of Hegseth being entrenched in this scandal: “His job would be to brief the commander in chief on the status of U.S. services members whose family are waiting do hear details. And Secretary Hegseth didn’t do the bare minimum of his job,” she said. She went on to detail the dangers of the discussion being had on Signal in the first place, saying, “It was specific air strikes in naming the actual aircraft that we were using. And we know the Houthis actually have very advanced missile and aircraft defense system that they’ve gotten from the Iranian government. In that two-hour period, it could have harmed U.S. forces.”

Sunny Hostin once again slammed the placement and confirmation of Hegseth into the position, saying, “We all knew Hegseth was unqualified for this job,” and said he was personally responsible for the scandal and should hold himself accountable. “He is responsible for everything. It was his decision to use that group chat.”

Sara Haines continued on Griffin’s point about the Signal chat endangering our troops by saying, “Not only could it have completely stymied the whole attack, and the Houthis could have caught on, they could have actually shot down our pilots. And so putting people at that risk, and right now, they keep going back and forth on if it’s a war plan or an attack plan, they need to stop spinning in circles.” She added that while she does think it should result in firings and possibly criminal responses, it won’t, but she at least wants to hear someone explain how it won’t happen again.

Goldberg then jumped back in to close out the segment, once again calling Jeffrey Goldberg her “cousin” in jest and had a specific message for Pete Hegseth: “I listened when Hegseth was talking about the man he replaced, and I listened to how he basically, said, ‘You were not good at your job. You didn’t know what you were doing.’ Pete… Pete! It’s you now. It’s you. There’s nobody else to blame. This is on you.”

She went on to speak to the administration and those Republicans defending Hegseth and the others involved in the Signal scandal, saying, “Stop treating your base like they’re dumb. Stop.”