On Tuesday (April 29) night, Donald Trump sat for an interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran at the White House to commemorate the first 100 days of his second presidency. Several moments from the one-on-one have since made headlines, including a heated exchange over Kilmar Ábrego García, a legal resident of the U.S. who was deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison and whose case sparked a Supreme Court order for Trump’s administration to “facilitate” his return. Trump argued that while he “could” bring the Maryland dad back home he wouldn’t because he had MS-13 tattoos, a fact which the interviewer pointed out was in dispute.
On Wednesday’s live episode of The View, the cohosts offered their reactions to a clip of that portion of the interview, and at least one cohost came away from it with a surprising new perspective.
“I watched the whole thing,” Joy Behar said right away. “And I’m really starting to feel sorry for him.” But what exactly made her feel that way? She explained, “He’s in over his head. The simplest questions he cannot answer. He knows that only immigration is maybe where he has been somewhat successful… and then he turns on Terry Moran when he asked, ‘How dare you ask me a question I can’t answer?’ I mean, the guy is over his head.”
Sunny Hostin, for one, said she “didn’t feel badly for him at all.” Instead, her sympathy goes towards everyone else in the country. “As an attorney, I always believed in the rule of law, and we’ve always said that this is a constitutional democracy, and we are a country of laws,” she explained, adding that this case creates a “constitutional crisis.” “You have a federal judge in Maryland that says, ‘Bring him back, facilitate his return.’ It goes to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then says, ‘Facilitate his return.’ Then you have President Trump during this interview saying, ‘I’m not going to bring it back. I can, but I’m not going to,’” she explained. “When we talk about lawyers talk about a constitutional crisis, ladies and gentlemen, we are here. We are in this constitutional crisis when you have the president of the United States on ABC News National interview saying, ‘I am not going to do what the Supreme Court [says].’”
Alyssa Farah Griffin said it was a “huge failure” of Trump’s team to not warn him that the images of the supposed hand tattoos were photoshopped. “It speaks to sort of a community of people not wanting to speak truth to him because they’re fearful they may lose their jobs,” she noted.
Whoopi Goldberg closed the chat by slamming Trump’s deportation policies that have resulted in U.S. citizen children being deported and called it “the embarrassment of America” that due process is no longer being employed for these deportations.
