Tipsheet

Biden’s Handling of Classified Docs Is So Bad He’s Lost the Ladies on ‘The View’

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  January 18, 2023 10:00 AM

Whenever there's discussion about the ladies of "The View," it's almost always to do with how they've said something particularly dumb. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, though, as Joy Behar and Sonny Hostin can acknowledge President Joe Biden has really messed up when it comes to his handling of classified documents.

The segment in question from Tuesday highlighted clips of Democratic members, including Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Rep. Adam Schiff of California, acknowledging on various Sunday shows that it wasn't a good look for the president. 

"I think that Biden should speak more," Behar said early on in the segment, before Whoopi Goldberg caught her off to defend the president, as she had been doing when introducing the segment. Continuing on, Behar naturally had to remind everyone "I love Joe Biden," and assure Goldberg she knew there was a difference between Biden and former President Donald Trump's handling of documents. She and Goldberg even lamented media coverage. 

"But it would have been helpful for Joe Biden, when it first came out to say--and we have tape of Joe Biden saying Trump did something stupid and shouldn't have done it and it was bad--well, he should have said 'look, I know I look hypocritical in that tape, I'm sorry about that, I didn't know about this, and know that I know it, I will do what I can to uncover this.'"

Not only did Biden indeed say during a "60 Minutes" interview from September that how Trump handled documents was "irresponsible," he also initially was evasive about his own handling of documents, and then didn't exactly take the right tone when he did address it. 

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"I mean, he should be speaking to the American people," Behar added, before throwing in some partisan politics to suggest "or else just act like a Republican and say 'it's a witch hunt and let's fire [Attorney General] Merrick Garland!'" 

Hostin similarly weighed in to offer "I think it would go a long way for [Biden] to also say 'and I was careless,' and we need to not only review these documents, we need to review the process." She did point out, though, that the president "has been advised not to talk" and so we're unlikely to hear anything from him until the Special Counsel comes back with more information.

In another stunning display of sanity, Hostin also raised issue with "the dripping out of information," in that more documents were found than we were initially made aware of. "At first it was 10 documents, in one place, and then there were some--just a few more--in another place, and now there were four different occasions where documents were found." Hostin later wondered "is it a document free-for-all?"

On Saturday, news broke that even more documents had been found, after White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had just said on Thursday that the search was "complete."

It wouldn't really be "The View," though, without some support for Biden, as again, Goldberg repeatedly throughout the segment made sure to defend the president and his lack of knowledge about what is in the documents, going with the narrative that, as so many Democratic members have, the situation is different from that of Trump.