The cohosts of The View were extremely fired up when it came to their discussion of the latest reporting about Donald Trump. In Bob Woodward’s newest book, War, the famed journalist reported that Trump covertly sent then-scarce Covid tests to Vladimir Putin and has had calls with the Russian dictator at least seven times since Trump’s presidency ended.
Whoopi Goldberg was decidedly not surprised by the news; “It’s not like he’s ever hidden how much he loves a dictator,” she argued. However, Joy Behar was truly steamed and insisted Trump was a “traitor” against the American people for what he allegedly did.
“If we have another pandemic, he’ll probably send the stuff to North Korea. The thing about this is that during the Covid pandemic, the blue states didn’t support him, so he didn’t want to send the tests to the blue states,” she noted before adding, “By the way, the Kremlin has confirmed that he sent the Covid tests to the Kremlin when Americans were in need of the Covid tests. Now, I believe that is the definition of a traitor, am I wrong?”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was actually part of the Trump administration’s Covid response team, said the news “blew” her mind: “I was in the White House coronavirus task force meetings in the Situation Room nearly every day. Donald Trump rarely ever attended them. I can probably count on one hand how many times and we had them every single day. And this was reportedly in May of 2020, the height of the pandemic. There was a massive shortage of testing in America,” she explained. “Meanwhile, Donald Trump is quietly sending them to Vladimir Putin. Now, I’m all for helping our allies when we have excess, and they have needs. We did not have excess, and this is one of our adversaries — one of our chief geopolitical adversaries…. We know that he loves strongmen, and he particularly has this special affection and admiration for Vladimir Putin.”
For Sunny Hostin, the fact that Trump has been communicating so frequently with Putin outside of the White House raises questions about his allegedly criminal behavior in keeping top-secret documents. “I wonder why did he speak to Putin seven times. Could it have anything to do with all those documents he had in his gilded bathroom in Mar-a-lago? Could it have anything to do with those security documents? Could it have anything to do with those nuclear documents?… That should scare every single American,” she said.
Sara Haines responded to some footage of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, downplaying the reporting and said, “What really pisses me off is he goes on to say, ‘Well, we can stay in touch with world leaders.’ No, you can’t. This job was never personal, and that’s all President Trump thought it was. He thought, ‘You take the Rolodex on the way out. You take the private documents on the way out.’ And he loves … these strongmen. He thinks it’s so empowering to watch them, and they are playing him like a small violin.”
Ultimately, though, Goldberg concluded the conversation by challenging her cohosts and viewers at home to compartmentalize the constant wash of upsetting news about Trump, saying, “The insanity is meant to make us all crazy. It’s meant to make us say, ‘Oh my god, did you hear what they said?!’ So I’m going to propose this: Let them keep their kookiness, their weirdness, their bizarr-o-ness, and let’s all focus on what we need as a nation. ‘Cause they’re not paying any attention, and I’m tired of paying attention to them.”
However, she also had a challenge for those who agree with Trump’s apparent affinity for dictators, saying, “I feel like if you really feel that strongly about staying in touch with dictators, try living in a country with one. I say — ’cause ya’ll are always for us to go, ‘You go find somewhere.’ No, I’m going to invite you to do the same. You go and you live under a dictatorship.”
WOODWARD’S BOOK CLAIMS TRUMP SENT PUTIN COVID TESTS: #TheView co-hosts weigh in on allegations from Bob Woodward’s latest book about the former president’s ties to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin. pic.twitter.com/AiVs7YHCFc
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