Whoopi Goldberg, co-host on "The View," said that U.S. citizens would not be stuck in their homes under self-quarantine if America had decent leadership.

What are the details?

During the show's Friday broadcast, Goldberg said that a lack of leadership all but guaranteed Americans would be under lock and key in their homes to wait out the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-host Sunny Hostin, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, insisted that Americans were under fire because they were caught unaware. She explained that Americans were not on guard because their president insisted that COVID-19 was a "hoax" — a suggestion that the president has vehemently denied.

In February, the president, instead, said that Democrats were politicizing the coronavirus outbreak and weaponizing it against his administration. For his part, Trump simply insisted that Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to it was a hoax in itself.

Here's what he said at the time (emphasis added):

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They're politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, 'How's President Trump doing?' They go, 'Oh, not good, not good.' They have no clue. They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa, they can't even count. No they can't. They can't count their votes.



One of my people came up to me and said, 'Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn't work out too well. They couldn't do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they've been doing it since you got in. It's all turning, they lost, it's all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing. We're 15 people [cases of coronavirus infection] in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.

What else?

"[Americans] listened to the president, who called it a hoax," Hostin insisted. "There are lives at stake."

Goldberg then went on to put the blame squarely on "leadership."

"The interesting thing about all of this is whatever channel you're watching, you're still watching from home," she began. "You're watching from inside your house. Because a pandemic has happened, and you are stuck, and whatever side you're on, you understand that when you have leadership you would not be — you would not be stuck in your house."