Whoopi Goldberg floated a bizarre theory during Monday’s broadcast of “The View” on ABC, suggesting that FBI Director Kash Patel had been sent to Italy to watch Team USA’s first Olympic hockey gold medal in 46 years because the rank and file wanted him out of the way.
Goldberg and her cohosts began the segment by bashing Patel for going to the championship game between fierce rivals, the United States and Canada, because that meant he was not present to handle other major issues in which the FBI has been deeply involved.
Cohost Ana Navarro mentioned the videos that showed Patel partying with Team USA in the locker room after their overtime win, and complained that he was behaving like “a member of ‘Animal House,'” and claimed she had no idea what he was even doing there.
Sara Haines argued that she personally would rather have a law enforcement leader who was “serious and borderline boring,” complaining that he was partying instead of dealing with real issues like the upheaval in Mexico and the Secret Service-involved shooting at Mar-a-Lago.
“Right now the world doesn’t feel settled or stable, and you’ve got the head of the FBI, and the visual of chugging a beer in a locker room,” she added, arguing that he was not helping the administration to appear more “competent” and that the whole scenario was “a bit of an insult to the American people.”
Whoopi suggests the rest of the FBI told Patel to get out of the office to get their “incompetent” boss out of their hair so they could do their jobs:
“I’m going to put a positive spin on it. Maybe the folks in the FBI say, ‘yeah, Kash, go do that’ so they don’t have to deal with… pic.twitter.com/Fjof0tBmGn— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) February 23, 2026
Goldberg then pivoted to suggest that maybe the move had come at the behest of some in the FBI who felt that they would be better able to do their jobs if Patel was off doing something else.
“I’m going to put a positive spin on it. Maybe the folks in the FBI say, ‘yeah, Kash, go do that’ so they don’t have to deal with him, because they know he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she said. “They know that he is incompetent. They know that he is just — he is a joke and he is a joke in the rest of the world. And because for most of the people working in the FBI it is not a joke. They are the ones whose eyes are on the ball.”
Patel himself addressed the media scrutiny in a post to X, saying that he’d been invited to celebrate with Team USA after their gold-medal win and had chosen to do so.
“For the very concerned media — yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys,” he said. “Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth.”
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