Joy Behar slams GOP leaders’ waning Ukraine support: ‘We didn’t learn from Hitler?’
Julia Johnson
Video Embed
The View’s Joy Behar called out former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for their waning support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“This is the kind of thing that spreads and gets worse and worse. We didn’t learn from Hitler? I mean, how many examples do we have to have?” she asked her co-hosts on Wednesday.
Behar was responding to news that DeSantis had joined Trump in expressing interest in curtailing some of the current aid to Ukraine’s war effort.
“Becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of” the United States’s vital interests, the Florida governor responded to a questionnaire from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,” he added.
Trump similarly maintained that opposing Russia in the war is vital “for Europe. But not for the United States.”
iFrame Object
The former president added that Europe is “relying on the United States to largely do it for them. That is very unfair to us. Especially since Europe takes advantage of us on trade and other things.”
“Europe should be paying far more than we are, or equal,” Trump said.
Behar skewered the two favorites for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. According to the host, they are “extremely naive and stupid” to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin would stop at Ukraine and not invade other surrounding countries.
“We saw in World War II that there were many isolationists in this country and not until Pearl Harbor was bombed did we get into the war. So we’re seeing a similar thing happen here,” she claimed.
Alyssa Farah Griffin added, “Well, I would note that [DeSantis] was for supporting Ukraine before he was against it.”
“In 2014 after the Russian invasion of Crimea, DeSantis was for sending javelins and more funding to support our Ukrainian allies,” she detailed.
She then claimed that DeSantis was attempting to appease Tucker Carlson’s large television audience. “If you’re trying to appease a television audience to get elected, it’s not going to work,” she said.
“We like to celebrate being on the right side of World War II and winning. We don’t think about all the little decisions that had to be made up until that point of the U.S. getting in and trying to thwart wrongdoing,” Griffin said. “We’re standing by Ukraine because we want to deter this from getting worse. We want to see peace rather than Russia taking over Ukraine and, who knows, move on to Poland.”
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley also criticized DeSantis, accusing him of copying Trump. “President Trump is right when he says Gov. DeSantis is copying him — first in his style, then on entitlement reform, and now on Ukraine,” she said in a statement.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“I have a different style than President Trump, and while I agree with him on most policies, I do not on those. Republicans deserve a choice, not an echo,” she continued.
While both Trump and Haley have announced their candidacies, DeSantis has yet to launch a 2024 bid. However, the popular Florida governor is widely expected to make an announcement in the coming months.