‘The View’ Dresses Child Up As Chinese Spy Balloon One Year After Facing Backlash For Oscars Slap Costume

The View‘s bizarre Halloween tradition continued today, and no Hot Topic was left off the table.

Every year, the show’s wardrobe supervisor, Ashley Alderfer Kaufman, introduces a slate of costumes inspired by some of the most buzz-worthy headlines from the previous year. What makes the segment even more adorable? That a group of children are the ones wearing the costumes.

On this morning’s episode, one boy dressed up as The Golden Bachelor star Gerry Turner, while a number of young girls mimicked Taylor Swift‘s iconic Eras Tour outfits — complete with a Travis Kelce stand-in. However, the most head-turning costume belonged to one child, who dressed up as the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the U.S. back in the beginning of the year.

“Every year there is a new story that we are all fixating on,” Kaufman explained. “This year is what this one: the Chinese spy balloon? At first, no one knew what it was [or] why it was there — a floating balloon flying across the U.S. airspace for seven days. Finally, the U.S. Air Force shot it down and officials reported it was carrying intelligence-gathering equipment yet no information was sent back to China.”

Meanwhile, a child wearing a white, blowup costume with a top hat on his head and a magnifying glass in his hand waddled out on the stage, drawing laughter from The View co-hosts.

The hit daytime talk show certainly played it safe this year after drawing backlash for dressing a child up as the infamous Oscars slap during the 2022 Halloween celebration. While looking back on Will Smith rushing the stage and slapping Chris Rock across the face during the televised award show, a child dressed in gold from head to toe with a red handprint on the side of their face appeared on the stage.

“We do not want to endorse violence of any kind but we couldn’t help but talk about one of the hottest topics of this year,” Kaufman said at the time, while X users slammed the costume as “bad taste” and urged the show to “do better.”

But hey! At least the most violent they got this year was having two kids dress up as Rockem Sockem Robots that had Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg‘s faces attached to them — which was a reference to the X CEO challenging the Facebook creator to a “cage match” earlier this year.

The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.