Joy Behar celebrated her birthday on Monday’s (October 7) new episode of The View, but she was hardly in a gleeful mood. In fact, she accused Donald Trump of “ruining” her birthday because she and the other panelists had to talk about the latest news involving his administration — namely, that he is openly considering invoking the Insurrection Act after he sent military troops into major blue-leaning cities like Portland and Chicago.
“The thing about it is that him sending military into Portland, Portland had an ICE facility protest of eight to 15 people…. Then, because he sent them in there, that’s gotten worse. So, he creates the problem,” she said.
Behar later offered a grim prediction (not for the first time) for what Trump is really doing with these moves, saying, “This is a pretext to stop the next election. That’s what I think it is.”
She wasn’t the only one to have a less than joyous outlook on the news.
Sara Haines compared the footage coming out of the cities that Trump claimed to be in need of federal intervention to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “I kept thinking, ‘OK, I’m going to concede, is this rising to the occasion where we need the National Guard?’ The crowds that they are drawing are a fraction of when it’s been used in history, when they’ve actually decided to deploy the National Guard into these places. And I would just ask for some consistency then because when I looked at the video of January 6, that was very clearly people uprising, vandalizing the Capitol, killing — very much, an insurrection. But there, literally, there was video. I kept looking for video here to say, ‘When are we seeing things to this level?’ Because this administration is known for its messaging and owning a narrative. If they were seeing that, I feel they would have pasted it everywhere. The problem is, when you go looking for these videos, sometimes the aggressors are the law enforcement and the ICE agents, so that’s problematic to their message.”
Then, Sunny Hostin pointed to Project 2025 as the basis of these actions by Trump, saying, “President Trump trying to militarize our states across the country. And you need only look at Project 2025, this is the plan. It’s a 900-page document. I read it… I actually think that people should read it because it is right on page 555, that was part of the plan to militarize our troops, our National Guard, against our states. It’s right there and right now, folks, this was always the plan, and we are experiencing it.”
Even Alyssa Farah Griffin, who said she tends to favor decisions that are “tough on crime,” contended, “There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with crime in American cities. So Chicago is often pointed to. They have one weekend over the summer where there was something like 28 homicides. That’s not right. But how do you historically deal with crime in American cities in a way that doesn’t escalate violence? You first see if the governor and if the mayor needs law enforcement to support the existing law enforcement, you make sure it has enough funding, that they have the proper training, and then, if necessary, you deploy federal law enforcement. So this would be FBI and other trained law enforcement who deal with these kind of crimes, to work with local officials. Instead, what you have is the federal government not working with the state officials, and then jumping to this Nth degree step, which is bringing in the National Guard, or, God forbid, the U.S. military. It’s not a way to address the problem.”
Haines then offered another theory, saying, “It might also be a distraction from the hearing that’s going on right now about Epstein. Some things have come up, and AG Pam Bondi dodging and attacking that.”
Whoopi Goldberg, for one, remained optimistic that things won’t go as far as Behar predicted, saying, “It’s the one thing that makes us very different from lots of other countries, our votes. They do count. I do know that they count.”
When Behar doubted whether people will be able to vote in the next election, Goldberg continued, “Well, I think people will figure out how to vote, because one thing I believe I know about Americans, they don’t want to be told what to do. They don’t want it. You can suggest some stuff, but they don’t want you saying, ‘You’ve got to go over here and do this.’ They don’t want that. They don’t want a dictatorship.”
The View, weekdays, 11a/10c, ABC