On Tuesday’s (October 15) episode of The View, the cohosts wasted no time in taking Donald Trump to task over his latest campaign stop: an ostensible town hall in Pennsylvania during which he stopped answering questions from the crowd and instead played and danced to 40 minutes of music.
For Whoopi Goldberg, this was no laughing matter at all; “This should freak everybody out,” she said. “57 minutes of him playing music, not saying jack about anything to do with what’s going on. This freaked me out. He has freaked me out a lot, but this really freaked me out.”
Joy Behar thought there was a simple but obvious reason the event turned into a jam session featuring a random assortment of songs (from “Ave Maria” to “Nothing Compares 2 U” to “Time to Say Goodbye”). “So he opens the thing up to Q&A, so the audience can ask him questions. He doesn’t have the answers… Somebody said, ‘What are you going to do about affordable housing? He talks about drilling oil.”
Former Trump administration official Alyssa Farah Griffin was so confused by the footage of the event that she thought it was a “deep fake” at first and that it signaled a “decline” in his cognitive status. Then, Sara Haines warned that since no one stopped him from swaying to song after song instead of taking audience questions, “This is what a presidency looks like with him. There was not one grownup in the room.”
Griffin then pointed out that Trump’s refusal to answer questions is part of a growing trend with the Republican candidate, saying, “He refused to do another debate, he refused to do 60 Minutes, there was a report this morning, he backed out on a Squawk Box interview on CNBC.”
After a commercial break, the group returned to the subject — only this time, they offered up a contrast between Trump’s recent reluctance to be quizzed on policy and Kamala Harris’ decision to be interviewed by Fox News’ Bret Baier and possibly Joe Rogan, both of whom are arguably perceived as friendlier to Trump.
In response, Behar had a fiery response that even got her bleeped out by producers; “He won’t even take questions from his own supporters,” she said, “And she will go into enemy territory. That shows you she has more [bleep].”
Goldberg added, “Women are forced to go into places where people don’t always welcome them. She understands what that is.” She went on to thank the men in the live audience for being there and offered praise to Baier and Rogan, saying, “Thank you to Bret Baier to saying yes to Joe Rogen for saying yes. Thank you for that.”
The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC