President Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress apparently went so well that the set of ABC News’s The View became a copium den during Wednesday’s episode. So desperate were they to find fault with Trump’s speech that Joy Behar stoked fear of Trump shaking hands with members of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, moderator Whoopi Goldberg shouted down the one ounce of criticism lobbed at Democrats for their antics.
While most of the two segments on the speech directed criticism at Trump, when faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin tried to direct a little bit of it at Democrats for how they acted, Goldberg wasn’t going to allow it:
FARAH GRIFFIN: But I thought the antics on the floor were not helpful. I don't think that waving a cane is the optics that the Democrats want in this.
BEHAR (interrupting): What should they have done?
FARAH GRIFFIN: I don’t think holding up signs which are now just being mocked on the internet. It’s like, who was advising these people.
GOLDBERG (shouting over): You know what? Here’s – Here's WHAT DIDN’T happen!
Goldberg raged at the idea of criticizing Democrats from the right and decried it as “snowflake behavior of the Republicans.” “You know, you can't take it. You can dish it out but you can't take it!” she lashed out at Farah Griffin, despite her not being a real Republican.
The only criticism of Democrats Goldberg allowed was Sunny Hostin saying they should have been more disruptive. Which she shouted about:
What I saw when Representative Al green stood up and said, you don't have a mandate to take away Medicaid, and he was tossed out! I expected the rest of his Democratic caucus, his colleagues to walk out with him! Because alone you can survive but together you thrive! That is the energy that we need! They should have stood with him in solidarity!
The View’s hysteria also included Behar panicking over Trump shaking hands with members of the Supreme Court, which she deduced meant: “We don't have a separation of powers anymore.” She claimed watching them shake hands “was a moment there that really stopped my heart.”
She then cooked up a conspiracy theory based on Trump and Chief Justice John Roberts exchanging pleasantries:
He said to justice Roberts, ‘thank you again, thank you again, won't forget it.’ Now, what do you think he was referring to? Something like…the immunity that he basically passed on, correct, so that he be liable for the January 6 insurrection, if I recall.
“To say thank you to the chief justice for his personal victory,” Behar clutched her pearls. “There's no separation of powers anymore. The Congress is in the bag. Supreme Court in the bag. I'm thinking that's what he was thinking, anyway.”
Behar also claimed that Trump’s “biggest lie” was that he inherited a bad economy from Biden. She laughably asserted that, under Biden, our economy was “the envy of the world” and “the world admired our economy.”
“The lying, that was the biggest lie I think that he told. The whole thing was filled with lies. I watched the whole thing. It was lie, lie, like a bad stand-up comic he was doing a bad set, you know. And lie after lie,” she spun her wheels.
In addition to those hot takes, pretend independent Sara Haines admitted she hates that Trump speaks for his voters. “What has always bothered me about when Donald Trump speaks is, he speaks for people who voted for him,” she decried.
“He did not mess around with insulting Democrats the entire time, like, mocking them,” she whined while offering zero criticism of Democrats.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
ABC’s The View
March 5, 2025
11:03:54 a.m. Eastern(…)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It turned out that all we really needed was a new president.
[Cuts back to live]
JOY BEHAR: Oh, god.
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Okay. That's a lot to unpack. So, if you watched, what were your takeaways?
BEHAR: Just that last part about they inherited the worst economy. When Biden was in, we had the envy of the world. We had -- the world admired our economy.
[Applause]
The lying, that was the biggest lie I think that he told. The whole thing was filled with lies. I watched the whole thing. It was lie, lie, like a bad stand-up comic he was doing a bad set, you know. And lie after lie, but the worst one was that, because he inherited the lowest unemployment since Nixon. He inherited a roaring stock market, which we saw took a tumble the other day. And inflation rate that Biden brought down from over nine percent to 2.7 percent. And we were the economy envy of the world. Now we’re just the enemy of the world. Everybody is mad at us. Canada is mad at us.
(…)
11:06:50 a.m. Eastern
SARA HAINES: Alyssa, what you were saying about he wasn't vying for other voters, what has always bothered me about when Donald Trump speaks is, he speaks for people who voted for him. And one thing of the old politicians of days gone by was they always reminded people, I'm a president for everyone, whether you voted for me or not.
He did not mess around with insulting Democrats the entire time, like, mocking them, he also brought up President Biden a lot more than I would have expected. Like you won, move on. Like, let's go.
(…)
11:09:06 a.m. Eastern
SUNNY HOSTIN: You know, I know how much this president loves his ratings, so I did not turn the TV on. I turned the TV off!
[Applause]
And what I did was I watched the State of the People Summit which was counterprogramming! At last count, when I tuned off at 11:30 P.M. There were about 200,000 viewers. There was -- it was a 24-hour program. It included hours dedicated to the actual issues that our country is facing. For example, there was an economic hour, there was a legal hour, there was a faith-based hour. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries showed up for that. Jasmine Crockett was there, other civil rights leaders. So, unlike Trump's campaign speech which is, I think, what we really saw, this was actually informative programming. And so, that's what I watched but I can speak in the next segment as to some of the clips that I – that I saw.
(…)
11:16:34 a.m. Eastern
BEHAR: We don't have a separation of powers anymore.
GOLDBERG: No.
BEHAR: And there was a moment there that really stopped my heart, and that was when Trump shook hands with the members of the Supreme Court who were there. And those were Kavanaugh, Kagan, Barrett, and Justice Roberts.
He said to justice Roberts, ‘thank you again, thank you again, won't forget it.’ Now, what do you think he was referring to? Something like.
GOLDBERG: I thought he helped him get into the men's room.
BEHAR: Well no, the immunity that he basically passed on, correct, so that he be liable for the January 6 insurrection, if I recall.
HOSTIN: He has a significant amount of immunity from this court and I think, you know, most people know now that the Supreme Court's approval rating is lower than it's ever been to the history of the court.
BEHAR: To say thank you to the chief justice for his personal victory.
HOSTIN: Is wholly inappropriate.
BEHAR: There's no separation of powers anymore. The Congress is in the bag. Supreme Court in the bag. I'm thinking that's what he was thinking, anyway.
HOSTIN: Can I add to that, because, you know, while I didn't watch it, I was looking for signs of an opposition party, which is what the Democratic Party must be at this point. Not a resistance, because resistance is passive. Opposition is active. And I think that the -- What I saw when Representative Al green stood up and said, you don't have a mandate to take away Medicaid, and he was tossed out! I expected the rest of his Democratic caucus, his colleagues to walk out with him! Because alone you can survive but together you thrive! That is the energy that we need! They should have stood with him in solidarity!
(…)
11:18:33 a.m. Eastern
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I thought that Elissa Slotkin was masterful and I think she gave Democrats the winning message that they flailed to have. But I thought the antics on the floor were not helpful. I don't think that waving a cane is the optics that the Democrats want in this.
BEHAR (interrupting): What should they have done?
FARAH GRIFFIN: I don’t think holding up signs which are now just being mocked on the internet. It’s like, who was advising these people.
GOLDBERG (shouting over): You know what? Here’s – Here's WHAT DIDN’T happen! You see, last time someone did that --
HOSTIN: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
GOLDBERG: She was engaged by the president. See, all of this snowflake behavior of the Republicans, you know, you can't take it. You can dish it out but you can't take it!
BEHAR: That's right!
(…)
