Marshaling all the fortitude I could summon, I forced myself to watch The View on Monday morning after the fateful weekend in which former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.  I had seen numerous videos of stalwart Trump-hater, Joy Behar, denouncing Trump publicly, likening him to Hitler, and proclaiming the death of democracy and America if he were to be elected for a second term as president this November.  I also knew that her co-hosts had uttered similar condemnations, particularly Sonny Hostin, so I was curious to see their reactions to the attempted assassination — as well as gauge their disappointment that Trump had survived.

The show opened to an enthusiastic audience, clapping and hooting.  It was surreal.  It was as if none of them knew of the horrific events of the previous Saturday: the near assassination of a former president, the terror that rippled through thousands, the bloodshed, the former firefighter who had been murdered protecting his wife and two daughters, the two other men critically wounded.  Instead, the atmosphere was euphoric as they welcomed the women of The View to the stage.

The camera then zoomed in on Joy Behar.  Her face appeared old, worn, haggard, and grave; she looked as though she hadn’t slept in 48 hours.  She didn’t smile as she reported the near death of former President Trump.  If she was relieved that Trump had survived the attack, she didn’t convey that sentiment.  Instead, she and several others expressed their formal and stiff gratitude for Trump’s safety.  It was a compulsory, pro forma exercise, lacking in enthusiasm or sincerity, the words dry and distasteful.

Throughout the first few minutes of the show that were devoted to President Trump’s near assassination, they echoed the calls we’ve all heard to “ramp down the hateful rhetoric” — never once acknowledging their own contributions to the incendiary clamor for Trump’s demise.  There were no confessions of culpability, not a modicum of honest self-awareness.  Instead, the viragos of The View blamed everyone and everything else.  They blamed text messaging, cell phones, social media, and more.  They behaved as if they were unsullied.

Joy Behar made sure to underscore the fact that the assassin was registered as a Republican, while glossing over the fact that he had donated to a leftist political organization the day Biden was elected.

They went on to laud President Biden for giving three — count ‘em, three — addresses to the nation about the Trump assassination attempt, the last one in the prestigious and very presidential Oval Office.  I’m sure in the eyes of The View’s termagants, his actions were worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, and Biden himself of sainthood.  To me, it seemed a desperate effort by Biden to wrench the media’s focus from Trump back to himself.

Within ten minutes, The View’s shrews started pounding the table for — you guessed it — gun control.  Ana Navarro and Sonny Hostin took the lead.  Hostin cited two polls showing an increase in political violence and claimed that Trump’s attempted assassination was a rally cry for gun control.  She voiced her fear that gun ownership is going to go up because of this incident.

Apparently, the vixens of The View learned that Thomas Crooks had purchased 50 rounds of ammunition a few hours before his attempt to murder President Trump.  Demonstrating that ignorance is no deterrent, Behar declared that the purchase of that much ammunition by one person should’ve “been reported.”  To whom?  Big Brother?  Was the store owner supposed to know by clairvoyance that his buyer was going to attempt to kill someone?  No.  Behar is ignorant of the fact that gun-owners buy ammunition in quantity all the time, and often much larger.  She believes that every purchase of every gun, every purchase of every bullet should be reported so that the federal government can scrutinize every aspect of our 2nd Amendment rights.  She believes in strict gun control.  In fact, she’d do away with the 2nd Amendment altogether.  She wants a disarmed population.

To underscore her ignorance, in June of 2022, Behar declared, “Here’s the thing.  Once black people in this country get guns, things are going to change.  Trust me.”

Behar is entirely ignorant of the fact that of the 40 million black Americans, 13 million live in households with guns.

After about twenty minutes, the View viragos abandoned the Trump assassination story and returned to their normal routine.  They introduced their first guest, liberal and somewhat vacuous movie star Natalie Portman, gushing over her as a rising director in Hollywood.  Out of curiosity, I watched part of the interview.  Ms. Portman first lauded her friendship with a wonderful drag queen and then bubbled over about her son, who had avidly watched a women’s soccer match.  She thought it was great that young boys are now enthused about women’s sports, not just men’s sports, as in the past.  She was ecstatic over all the gains that had been made in women’s sports — without once addressing the whole transgender issue that now threatens women’s sports and women’s opportunity to compete fairly against one another, not against men pretending to be women, males who are stronger, faster, and bigger due to their male physiology.

That was all I could take of the pablum and palaver.  I turned off the TV, ran to the bathroom, and took a generous swig of Pepto-Bismol.

Eric Dawe is an award-winning writer, a chess enthusiast, and the author of two historical fiction books based on Virgil’s Aeneid: Aeneas, Last King of Troy and the sequel, Aeneas, Landfall of Legend.

Image via Pixnio.