‘The View’ Hosts Break Into ‘Hokey Pokey’ Song to Describe Trump’s Tariff Tactics

Amanda Bell March 11, 2025, 12:05 pm

The dreaded stock slumping has begun again, and The View cohosts decided not to sit back and let the president and his administration blame Joe Biden for the stock market taking a tumble on fears of an economic recession.

On Tuesday’s (March 11) edition of The View, they reviewed footage of Donald Trump sidestepping a question about whether there will be a recession as a result of economic policy decisions — including imposing or threatening tariffs on key trade partners like Canada and Mexico — and instead claiming he expects a “period of transition.”

In response, The View stars brought along some cold hard facts about the economy Trump inherited when he took office in January.

“So this [interview] helped send the market into free fall yesterday, which some MAGA folks are blaming on the Biden economy. So let me just remind you about the Biden economy,” Whoopi Goldberg said to kick off the segment. “The economy added 16.6 million jobs, and gross domestic product grew 12.6 percent. They are the only administration in history to have created jobs every single month.” After acknowledging the audience’s response, she added, “But wait, there’s more. They achieved the lowest average unemployment in 50 years, wealth adjusted for inflation rose a record 37 percent for the median American household, and Americans filed a record 21 million new small business applications, the most in any presidential administration… There were issues. There’s always going to be issues, but you can’t blame all of what’s happening on him.”

Joy Behar then followed suit and offered a similar series of stats, saying, “Of the 11 recessions in the modern era, 10 have begun under Republican presidents. The economies are always robust under Democrats, and then they have a surplus, and then — this is a fact — the Republicans come in and we have a deficit.”

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Behar then asked, “What happens to people? Why do they not understand the history of the economy of this country under Democrats and Republicans?” And after dismissing an attempt by Alyssa Farah Griffin to interrupt and argue against that point, Behar continued, “I think that the Republicans fool people about wokeism and transgenders, and they make up all of these what they call canards to distract them from their pocketbook. As soon as they stop getting the Social Security checks in this country, you’re going to see some action.”

Griffin then took her turn to disagree with Behar’s point by noting that before the pandemic in 2020, Trump’s first administration oversaw a strong economy. However, she also added that his current approach in this term isn’t taking the right approach, saying, “All of the market gains that he got after election day have now plummeted since he’s actually been in office and governing. In the first Trump agenda, he was clear. He leaned into traditional Republican ideas of how to lower costs and build the economy: tax cuts, energy policy, a deregulatory agenda. This time, he’s introduced tariffs in a much more sweeping way, and the market is reacting accordingly. When you tell businesses you cannot plan because today there’s tariffs, tomorrow there’s not.”

Goldberg interjected to expound upon Griffin’s note of the many twists and turns in the international tariffs policy with melodic intonation: “It’s like the ‘Hokey Pokey’! You put the tariffs in, you put the tariffs out, you put the tariffs in…” Even Griffin had to dance along to the beat before predicting, while “Republicans are going to give him a pretty long leash to try to rebuild the economy,” if it’s not better by the midterm elections, there’ll be trouble.

When Sunny Hostin then pointed out that when Trump left office, there was a record-high national deficit, Griffin blamed the pandemic, but Hostin wouldn’t accept that as an answer: “Scientists say that many more people’s lives could have been saved … had the Trump administration handled the pandemic better. So he has to take responsibility for that.”

She also noted that while Trump isn’t agreeing that a recession is imminent, the chances are now 40 percent, according to experts. “It’s just fascinating to me that more people aren’t talking about the fact that he is tanking the economy that he got,” she said.

Sara Haines jumped in to say that the tariffs were problematic in another way: by lowering consumer confidence. “You’re watching as not only the tariffs are kind of put in and put out, ‘Hokey Pokey’ style, and we don’t know, and those same business owners are on the phone with suppliers saying, ‘I don’t know if we order now or if we don’t order.’ They can’t make decisions. You’ve got everyone sitting here watching day to day as they cut all these federal agencies, and they don’t know if they’re coming back, if they’re not coming back. Elon just said they’re taking away entitlements, people that have fixed incomes and are living off those… People are holding on to what they have and stuffing it in mattresses right now. So that is also a massive part.”

Goldberg closed the conversation out by saying “people are in panic mode” over Trump’s economic moves, including the cuts to USAID that are affecting U.S. farmers, and she predicted Republicans might have something to say about it sooner than some might think.

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC