Hot on the heels of a viral video that caught "Orange Is the New Black" star Lea DeLaria confronting an anti-gay subway preacher on New York City's F subway train last week, another startling video has surfaced online and the women of "The View" had something to say about it.

On Nov. 12, Whoopi Goldberg led a discussion with Nicolle Wallace, Rosie Perez and special guest Ashanti about a now-viral video of a New York City subway brawl between a man and woman, arguing that the woman who was slapped by the man in the footage might have gotten her just deserts.

Posted to YouTube via WorldStarHipHop on Saturday, Nov. 8, the video, titled "Man smacks the soul out of girl on the NY Subway," depicts a woman taunting a man on the train by calling him "stupid," making fun of his accent and ridiculing his fashion sense, particularly his 8-ball jacket

Tension escalated when the woman, identified as 21-year-old Danay Howard, then smacked the man, a complete stranger, on the head.

The man, now identified as 6-foot-6-inch pitcher Jorge Pena, then ferociously slapped Howard in the face. This developed into a heated clash in the subway car that led to the arrest of many at the West 4th Street subway station at around 5 a.m that day.


Since the incident, Pena has had the misdemeanor indictments against him dropped after investigators determined the baseball player had acted in self-defense. According to Daily Mail, Pena moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic to play in minor leagues for the Oakland A's, until his pitching career was sidelined by a leg injury in 2010.

However, Howard was hit with felony assault and disorderly conduct, while her friends Kevin Gil, 21, and Shanique Campbell, 20, who had jumped into the fight to support Howard, were also charged with misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct.

"He slapped the living daylights out of every opening moment of her," R&B star singer Ashanti said.

Not afraid of a little controversy, Goldberg warned her audience in jest.

"Keep your tweets to yourself, because I'm about to piss you off," she said according to Mediaite. "If you slap anybody -- but particularly women -- if you slap, put your hands on somebody, you cannot be guaranteed that he's not going to slap the [blank] out of you."

"When I first heard you make that comment, I got very nervous because I felt you were giving license for men to go ahead and attack women, and I do believe that men should leave," Perez said. "But I felt a little hypocritical when I saw this, I was like, 'Okay, she needed to get slapped back' because she really attacked this man and the thing is that men -- I don't think you should hit women, you know -- But I think women, wake up -- if you slap someone, you may get slapped back."

Ashanti acquiesced, stating, "She definitely needed to get slapped."

Goldberg, who has a history of arguing similar viewpoints, stated last summer that rapper Jay Z had "the right" to hit his sister-in-law, Solange Knowles, during their now-notorious elevator incident, which was caught on footage and leaked to the public shortly after the incident at the 2014 Met Gala.

"I think Solange was quite ready for him to do whatever he was going to do," Goldberg said, defending her comments to former co-host Barbara Walters. "This is the thing: If anybody hits you, you have the right -- I know that many people are raised in a very different way -- but if a woman hits you, to me, you have the right to hit her back."

Similar remarks were made by Goldberg in July, after she came to the defense of ESPN correspondent Stephen A. Smith, preserving the context in which he made his original remarks, stating that women sometimes provoke their own abuse. This was in regards to how the wife of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice declared that she hit Rice first, thus making the claim that he was only defending himself.

"If you make the choice as a woman who is 4'3", and you decide to hit a guy who is 6 foot tall, and you're the last thing he wants to deal with that day, and he hits you back, you cannot be surprised," Goldberg said. "You have to teach women; do not live with this idea that men have this chivalry thing still with them. Don't assume that's still in place."

A panelist accused GOldberg of blaming the victim.

"[This] is not blame the victim! I just said, don't anybody hit anybody," Goldberg responded.

Goldberg has recently come under controversy once again on an episode of the "The View" that aired Nov. 17, wondering why Barbara Bowman, who accused comedian Bill Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 1985, never went to the authorities with proof upon being sexual assaulted multiple times.

Then a 17-year-old aspiring actress-model, Bowman told the Daily Mail that she never went to the police or her parents because she believed he was "too famous and too powerful for anyone to take her seriously."

"Perhaps the police might have believed it. Or the hospital. Don't you do a kit when you say someone has raped you?" Goldberg said.

"But there was a settlement," co-host Rosie O'Donnell retorted, referencing a 2006 lawsuit by Andrea Constand, another alleged victim. "So that's the thing that's curious."

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