Talk show personality Elisabeth Hasselbeck broke onto the scene as a competitor on Season
2 of the CBS monster hit Survivor.
Elisabeth Filarski, as she was called then, finished fourth and became a fan favorite.
The next year, she married college sweetheart-turned NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck, and in 2003,
she joined The View as co-host after she was reportedly voted onto the show, Survivor-style,
by Barbara Walters and the gang.
By 2009, she proved to be part of a winning ensemble when the ladies took home a Daytime
Emmy for top talk show.
Elisabeth became the show's go-to mouthpiece for conservative opinions before jumping ship
to Fox & Friends in 2013.
Though undeniably successful, Elisabeth consistently confounds her colleagues and fans with her
wildly contradictory positions on hot-button topics.
Call her hypocritical, or perhaps just prone to changing her mind, but there's plenty to
make a case for this star's double life.
Campaign trail
A proponent and defender of politically conservative policy on The View, Elisabeth frequently stuck
up for former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the show.
In late October 2008, Elisabeth even stepped away from the program to campaign for Palin,
the running mate of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Among her defenses of the former Vice Presidential candidate, she called critics of Palin's exorbitant
wardrobe budget "deliberately sexist," and Palin thanked her for the support.
But by the next campaign cycle, it was obvious Elisabeth's feelings for Palin had flipped.
Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate in the 2012 election against incumbent President
Barack Obama, and Palin had no official role in the drive for president, even though it
seemed at times like she was running for something.
Palin made her presence felt by embarking on a high-profile bus tour.
Hasselbeck took issue with Palin's rallies on The View, complaining that the public wasn't
getting to hear Romney's plans because Palin was dominating the discourse.
The Hasselbeck-Palin friendship may have first pivoted when Elisabeth criticized Palin's
tactics for fighting Obamacare in 2010, which included targeting congressional seats that
Republicans would need to win to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Elisabeth's suggestion was that Palin's list endangered those listed upon it, but then
when one of those names, Representative Gabby Giffords of Arizona, was among the 19 people
shot in a rampage on the state's capitol in 2011, Elisabeth changed her tune.
"Right now, to even say we need to curb what we're saying, only links any rhetoric to what
happened in Tucson.
There's no link!"
Flip, meet flop.
Same sex marriage
On occasion, Elisabeth Hasselbeck has been known to show favoritism towards same-sex
marriage rights.
"If you think anything is killing heterosexual marriage, the only thing that's killing it
is heterosexual marriage"
But, as Hasselbeck has been known to do, she's also flipped the script on the subject by
showing support for California Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex marriage.
"So you're saying… you're for gay marriage?"
"Look I…"
"Or Same sex marriage/" "For me it's not… for me it's not a personal issue."
Elisabeth's entire understanding of homosexuality came into doubt on The View in 2010 when she
said that women were becoming lesbians later in life...thanks to being left lonely by middle-aged men.
"I'll tell you what's happening, the older men are going for younger women leaving the
women with no one."
You can't make this stuff up.
Pro-choice
Elisabeth supported the legality of abortion during a 2010 Fancast interview, saying,
"I also don't believe that the government should tell women what to do with their bodies."
She noted that while she "believes life begins at conception, she didn't think it was the
place of the government to mandate reproductive rights.
At the same time, Hasselbeck has also been known to throw shame-shade on women who do have abortions.
"I'm not saying it's an easy decision but I do think there are convenience-based abortions"
She's also openly criticized the availability of the morning after pill, calling it, "the
same thing as birthing a baby and leaving it out in the street!"
Getting a case of whiplash yet?
Dancing with the snarks
An avid viewer of ABC's hit Dancing with the Stars, Elisabeth apparently saw something
she didn't like about a string of performances by sports broadcaster Erin Andrews in 2011 ---
her "next to nothing" costumes.
On The View, Elisabeth pointed out that Andrews had been a victim of stalking repeatedly in
the past year, including the widely reported peephole video case, and suggested that the
culprit could have achieved the same results by watching Andrews on TV.
"I mean, in some way if I'm him, I'm like, 'Man!
I just could've waited 12 weeks and seen this—a little bit less—without the prison time!'"
Needless to say, Andrews was none to thrilled about her comments.
"I thought it was a huge slap in the face to victims of stalking and sexual predators."
And perhaps Elisabeth forgot that she, too, donned next to nothing while competing on
Survivor in 2001 and that she reportedly attracted the attention of everybody on set.
But it wasn't her apparent apparel hypocrisy that had Elisabeth walking back on her words.
Hasselbeck's own daughter told her to apologize for hurting Andrews' feelings, so she did.
"I'm really sorry and I wanted to offer that publicly."
You might think that'd be the end of it — but it wasn't.
Andrews later denied ever speaking with Elisabeth, so whatever apology she seemed to offer in
public wasn't followed up with a private conversation to match.
For Andrews' part, she's definitely moved on from the celeb tiff with Hasselbeck, and
it's a new age for Elisabeth, too.
She quit Fox and Friends in 2015 to focus on her family, saying:
"I am, as I said, taking a new position as CBO, chief breakfast officer at our house"
But given how much she loves to shout her opinions — and then change them around a bit —
"Don't tell me what I can think and what I can't think"
— we suspect she won't be gone for long.
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