Joy Behar, a longtime liberal co-host of ABCs The View, acknowledged that she encouraged Vice President JD Vance to run for the White House after picking up what she described as his good vibe during a recent appearance on the daytime talk show.
Her comments emerged in a conversation with The Views executive producer Brian Teta on his podcast, where she reflected on Vances visit to the program, according to Mediaite. Behar, who has built a career on attacking Republican leaders and President Donald Trumps administration, surprised many by softening her tone toward the vice president, even as she maintained her ideological distance.
Teta pressed Behar on what she had said to Vance during a commercial break, noting, Im getting a note here. You told him during the break that he should run for president because he had a good vibe. Behar confirmed the exchange while stressing her partisan leanings, saying, I think that even though for a Republican, mind you. Im not a Republican. I think possibly I voted for Michael Bloomberg once for mayor who was supposedly, invoking the former New York City mayor as her rare exception.
Behar went on to draw a sharp contrast between how she views Republicans at the local level and on the national stage, making clear she prefers Democrats in federal office. I dont mind a Republican on the city level because it needs a little discipline, but on the national level, I want somebody with a good heart, and those are more in the Democratic Party in my opinion. They care about the poor, they help people. The Republican Party is much more about saving taxes for rich people. So Im not a Republican, she said, repeating a familiar progressive caricature of conservative economic policy.
Despite that rhetoric, Behar insisted she does not see Vance as a villain and even floated a hypothetical 2028 showdown that would pit him against a prominent Democrat. She added about Vance, Truthfully, as I said to you at the beginning of this conversation, I dont think that hes a bad guy. So if he runs against, say, Gavin Newsom, that would be an interesting debate to see those two because theyre both intelligent.
Behar later quipped that President Donald Trump might be getting jealous after watching how cordially the panel interacted with his vice president, a notable shift from the usual hostility conservatives face on the program. Yet she also identified a red line: Vances explanation that his earlier criticism of Trump stemmed from media portrayals of the President before he joined the ticket.
Dont give me that. Thats where I draw the line on the guy. Dont blame me for the fact you went to Yale law school, you cant read between the lines? You cant watch something and discern whats going on? Come on, she said, dismissing his rationale and implicitly defending the medias narrative. During his Tuesday appearance, Vance recounted Behars off-air assessment, noting that she had offered him a backhanded compliment across the ideological divide.
Joy said when we were off air that Im fine, which I think is about the best endorsement Im gonna get out of Joy Behar, he said, acknowledging the limits of liberal approval for a conservative vice president. For a Republican, Behar clarified, as Vance jokingly replied, Graded on a curve here at, underscoring how rare it is for a high-profile Republican in President Trumps second administration to receive even faint praise from one of daytime televisions most reliably progressive voices.
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