‘The View’ Hosts React to Trump Rally Shooting, Share Hopes & Fears for Aftermath (VIDEO)

Amanda Bell July 15, 2024, 12:00 pm

The View struck a very somber tone during Monday’s (July 15) hot topics segment. Right at the top of the hour, the co-hosts — Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin (Whoopi Goldberg was still out for health reasons) — addressed the weekend’s fatal incident of political violence at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday (July 13) night.

In response to the shooting, which injured Trump’s ear and caused the death of one rallygoer and two other injuries, all five View panelists took a moment to decry political violence as a whole.

“It was a very disturbing weekend,” Behar explained before showing footage of the shooting attack. “President Biden spoke about it from the Oval Office last night … I think we all agree with Biden, and Trump said he’s rewriting his RNC speech to call for unity also. So they’re both trying to lower the temperature. Is that even possible?”

Griffin, who used to work in Trump’s administration, said she was grateful for his safety and praised the Secret Service, adding, “I think it’s a moment for reflection on the tone and tenor of our politics. One thing that is fundamental is the right to criticize policies. It is also a right to criticize the character of our politicians, but the way in which we do it matters. We live in an era where escalatory rhetoric and saying the most damning and the most inciting thing oftentimes is what’s rewarded. And I think it’s incumbent on all of us to check how we engage.”

She went on to argue that political violence like this is incensed by foreign actors who are attempting to divide Americans: “On our phone there are algorithms that are pumping us information every day, meant to make us hate our fellow Americans. Our foreign adversaries are on our social media; they’re putting information to validate our worst assumptions about fellow Americans,” Griffin said. “We can have different political viewpoints in this country, and we can respect each other and respect each other’s right to different opinions and come together as a country. But the way you defeat America, it’s not with bombs. It’s not with missiles. It’s tearing us apart from within.”

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From there, Navarro spoke up to say that she, despite being a consistent and very vocal critic of Trump, was relieved that he was not seriously injured or killed in the shooting, and explained that it reminds her of her own childhood. She said, “I was shocked, and I was heartbroken because I fled political violence in Nicaragua. I felt the way I did when watching the January 6th attacks on democracy.”

Navarro went on to say that “that’s not supposed to happen in America,” which Haines agreed with.

“I feel like this seems like another time because most of us have only read about assassination attempts… You read about them, the ’60s were rife with these sorts of things,” Haines said.

However, Behar reminded her co-hosts that it’s not so far in the past that this has happened before at all: “To say that this doesn’t happen in America is false. It’s happened in your lifetime to [Ronald] Reagan, and Gerald Ford, there were attempted attacks on his life…”

Haines then contended that even those were “a very long time ago,” but Navarro backed Behar’s assertion, saying, “No but Sarah just in the last seven years, Steve Scalise [was shot], January 6th, Mike Pence.’

“There’s a lot of political violence, I recognize that,” Haines conceded before praising the current president’s response to the attack on his opponent. “I think the fact that Biden came out and did exactly what he should… First of all, he referenced that he had spoken with the former president. He referenced the victims of this, and then he had a very unifying message about how we are all the same, recognizing that political violence has no place in this country.”

Haines questioned whether the incident might also cause Trump to tamp down his inflammatory rhetoric, saying, “Stranger things have happened. People that have illnesses or near-death experiences, sometimes it can be a wakeup call to change.”

After the commercial break, it was Hostin’s turn to speak on the matter, and she steered the conversation forward to what she thinks should versus what she thinks will happen in the aftermath of the event, saying, “I know everybody always says it’s too soon to talk about guns, and that we should, because there has been a death of a father of two, but we should thoughts and prayers should be where we go. I say no. I say, Now is the time to talk about the common denominator when it came to this assassination attempt, is America’s fascination and obsession with owning guns…. I think that gun ownership will probably, because of this event, go up in this country instead of going down, and that is my fear. I think we need to have an honest and real conversation about real gun control legislation.”

BIDEN & TRUMP CALL FOR UNITY AFTER ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: #TheView co-hosts react to the attempted assassination of former Pres. Trump during a Pennsylvania campaign rally. pic.twitter.com/UwL8Pmpzgc

— The View (@TheView) July 15, 2024