This is what happens when you bring a real Republican — not a token one — onto “The View.”
On Monday, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz went on the ABC shouty-fest and was asked about election-denying. Things got bad enough that “The View” co-host Ana Navarro decided she wanted to forswear yelling — at least while Cruz was around.
The brouhaha began when Alyssa Farah Griffin, the newest token Republican on the show’s panel, asked him about the Capitol incursion.
“How do you reconcile your constitutional convictions with what happened on January 6?” she asked, following it up with: “Was Biden legitimately elected? Because half the [Republican] party thinks he wasn’t and it would be very powerful for you to tell the truth.”
“So, listen, Biden is the president today,” Cruz stated — then pivoted to the hypocrisy.
“There are a lot of folks in the media that try to, any time a Republican is in front of a TV camera, try to say, the election was fair and square and legitimate,” he said.
“Do you know who y’all don’t do that to? You don’t do it to Hillary Clinton who stood up and said, ‘Trump stole the election.’ Or Stacey Abrams who said the election was stolen. They sat here and said it was illegitimate,” Cruz continued.
“And it was!” panelist Whoopi Goldberg interjected.
“So it’s illegitimate when Republicans win, but not Democrats?” Cruz responded.
Do you agree with Ted Cruz?
For “The View” co-hosts, it wasn’t just embarrassing. It was humiliating — and their reactions showed it.
Goldberg was forced into the absurd argument that “we don’t go and we don’t storm” over election results, apparently ignorant of the country’s history since the dawn of the 21st century and the 2000 presidential contest.
The View explodes when Cruz calls out how the cast is supportive of election denialism from Democrats.
Whoopi says Trump’s victory was “illegitimate.”
“Okay, so it was illegitimate when Republicans win,” Cruz calls her out.
Whoopi claims Dems don’t get violent. pic.twitter.com/5Q7PQJtcaT— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 24, 2022
Whoopi argued Democrats “don’t try to change it.” Really? The record of events following the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections indicates otherwise.
Back in the day, this was even considered a mark of honor; witness Michael Moore’s 2004 film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which featured a montage of all the Democrat representatives who wanted to challenge the results of the 2000 election, lamenting the fact they could not find a senator to sign on to their cause.
Having both a U.S. representative and senator is necessary to file a challenge. In 2005, as CNN noted at the time, Democrats had that, with Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer challenging the vote in Ohio, citing “irregularities” and parroting the talking points of conspiracy theorists who claimed Diebold voting machines were somehow responsible for swinging the 2004 presidential election to George W. Bush.
Those “irregularities,” you will not be surprised to learn, were entirely fictive and the challenge failed.
As Cruz went on to note, there have been a ton of “election deniers” on the Democratic side — including Hillary Clinton, who cast doubt upon both the 2000 and 2016 elections, making her a double gold-medalist in the denial Olympics.
So, how did the panel respond? Ana Navarro counterargument, if it can be called such, was to ask Cruz to use his inside voice:
After reading off a list of Democrats calling elections illegitimate, all Ana Navarro can do is beg Ted Cruz to lower his voice lmfao. pic.twitter.com/xEZoNTfAEB
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 24, 2022
Yes, on “The View,” and when he wasn’t too loud. Oh, to hear Ana try and use this on Whoopi in the midst of one of the the show’s intra-panel bellowing-fests.
By her body language and tone, Navarro was trying to make Cruz obey an order. By any rational perspective, though, she was making a fool of herself.
As Twitterers noted, this wasn’t a good look.
After they’d been shouting him down the whole time ??♀️
— Elena (@ElenaKdotcom) October 24, 2022
When telling your opponent to lower his voice is the best you can do, you know you have no argument to make.
— God, family, country (@1masklessbandit) October 24, 2022
But this is the inconvenient truth about election denial: It was perfectly acceptable, even laudable, until it was Republicans who did it.
Stacey Abrams is running for Georgia governor when she hasn’t conceded the last race — and she’s a Democratic heroine for doing so. Hillary Clinton still occasionally gets mentioned as a possible stand-in for Biden in 2024 and she’s a multiple offender when it comes to election-denial — including races that didn’t even involve her.
But when Democrats win and Republicans question the results, words like “insurrection” and “treason” start getting thrown around. And the ladies of “The View” start kicking and screaming, demanding the GOP be held to account.
Yet, when someone comes on to introduce them to reality, they tell him to lower his voice. Quelle surprise.
