WHOOPI: Well, you know, they wouldn’t sign the Declaration of Independence unless they left slavery out, which is why I said to McCain when he said, "I’m a strict Constitutionalist," I said, "You don’t mean that."

LIZ: I thought that was a great thing when you asked, "Do I have to be worried about becoming a slave again?"

WHOOPI: But he realized, because, you know, people forget, you have to move with the nation. You have to change certain things, you know. The back of the bus had to be changed. You know, certain things had to happen. You had to grow up.

LIZ: Yes, and we also had to have a Civil War.

WHOOPI: Had to do all kinds of things.

LIZ: And then Lyndon Johnson and Dr. King had to come along.

WHOOPI: Oh, God bless LBJ.

LIZ: I’m wondering with "The View," as a phenomenon now, you don’t have regrets about doing this? I thought in the beginning, maybe you were a little, "Oh, God, I’d like to retire. But now, I guess I won’t."

WHOOPI: Well, I said to myself, "OK. Well, this would be fun to do." I’d like to talk. This is an interesting time to do it. And then the radio job went away and then I started to panic about working. I said, "Oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?"

LIZ: If you’re not making a million dollars a minute, you’re pretty unhappy.

WHOOPI: Yes, I’m very unhappy, you know. And now, thank God I made a million dollars or whatever, because after all of this shit that just went down …

LIZ: A million dollars doesn’t seem like anything.

WHOOPI: Four dollars and ninety-nine cents is what you ended up with.

LIZ: What I’m saying is, if peace on Earth and good will to men and women actually happened, could the "The View" survive? I mean, what is the show without conflict?

WHOOPI: Well, it’s a show about things that matter to people.

LIZ: So it’s bigger than conflict.

WHOOPI: It’s much bigger than conflict. It’s, how do I raise an autistic child? What are the possibilities for my child? What’s out there for my kid? Or, I think I’m gay and I want to come out, what’s out there for me? Where can I go? Who can I turn to? We can talk about everything. We have five women – periodically four, sometimes five – we are five women who can talk from five different platforms about 50 million things. And people want conflict because it makes them feel better about themselves. But they want information much more, as we saw, with the election.

LIZ: Well, that’s great. You know, I’ve thought that election night was honestly the most thrilling night of my life. And then I got up the next morning saying, "Well, what’ll I do now?" And then I read your wonderful piece that wOw put out. And then I thought, "I’ve got to write Whoopi and congratulate her." And for the first time ever, I thought, "I’m white, Whoopi’s black, and maybe it’s presumptuous of me to congratulate her." I mean, it’s like another reminder of it all.