For the first “Hot Topic” discussion of the day on Thursday (June 5), The View cohosts chose to discuss former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who served under Joe Biden, and her recently-announced decision to leave the Democratic party. Instead of digging into Jean-Pierre’s controversial move, however, the panelists focused more on their own political positions in the current climate… and moderator Whoopi Goldberg made the perhaps surprising revelation that she is not, contrary to popular belief, a Democrat.

“There’s no name for what I am,” Goldberg said during the discussion. “There’s no name. Because there are some things that fit with I want and some things that don’t. And I’m the crazy person who said, ‘Why don’t we have a Democratic president and a Republican vice president?’ I believe that the only way to get stuff done is to have both parties represented at the same time. And people keep telling me I’m crazy, but I don’t think I am. But both parties have issues, and for me, you know, there is no loyalty in the Democratic party and there’s absolute pig-headed loyalty in the Republican Party. And neither thing works for me.”

Goldberg later got praise from author James Patterson, who appeared on the show alongside former President Bill Clinton, to promote their new political thriller, The First Gentleman. “I love what Whoopi said earlier, too, and I don’t think you’re crazy at all: radical ways to somehow force the Democrats and Republicans to work together somehow, whatever it is.”

Goldberg’s comment came in response to Jean-Pierre’s statement that people should think outside the box while promoting her own new tell-all book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.

Earlier in the same conversation, Sara Haines, a self-proclaimed independent, said, “I think it’s a more honest political take. I feel like maybe I’m biased as an independent, that everyone should be independent, but it’s the largest group of voters we have are independents, and I think it’s because our system is so simplistic by having two parties and assuming anyone fits in those boxes at all.”

Haines continued, “I have voted left for 25 years, but I don’t identify as a Democrat because the Democrats don’t stand for what I stand for. Every voting for them, I wait to see the candidates, and if the Republicans ever put up a candidate that I was like, ‘That’s my person,’ in a heartbeat, I would vote for them.”

Sunny Hostin then pointed to statistics showing the partisan divide even between independents, saying, “Gallup says… 46% who identify as independents lean Republican, 45% that lean Democrat. Those that lean Democrat, they vote Democrat every single time, and those lean Republican vote that way every single time. I had a personal experience with my dad. He had been an independent for 40 years, and I said to him, ‘Have you ever voted for Republican?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘So then you’re a Democrat, but you’re precluding yourself… from choosing a candidate in the primaries,’ and so he switched, and now he’s a Democrat.”

Haines decided to speak up again and note that the vitriolic responses she got after calling for Biden to step down from the 2024 race were mostly from leftists, adding, “To me, the reason I’m an independent is to say, ‘I call ’em like I see him,’ and I hope you do, too, because that’s the way the system should work.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin was the next to speak and pointed out the unique nature of America’s bipartisan structuring, saying, “We are also one of the few nations on earth that has a two-party system, and I think that we should take some cues, like most of Europe, you have many, many parties.”

She then admitted, “There are definitely days that I’m like, ‘Am I still a Republican?’ watching decisions Trump’s doing on anything from tariffs to foreign policy… And then I look at the Democrats, I say, ‘I’m definitely not a Democrat right now.’”

She then slammed both parties for “rigging” the primaries, saying, “The Democrats put their finger on the scale in 2020 to try to keep Bernie Sanders from advancing, so that Joe Biden would be the person who would win. The calculation was Biden had a better chance of winning a general election. I happen to agree with that, but the voters were moving toward Bernie Sanders. That Republicans did the exact same thing for Donald Trump. We rigged the system in his favor in this last primary, so a Nikki Haley, a Will Hurd, a Ron DeSantis, no one else had a chance because we changed the primary dates to benefit him. That’s not democracy. That’s partisan politics.”

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC