The View is weighing in on Donald Trump‘s recent gaffes after the former president repeatedly mixed up Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Whoopi Goldberg kicked off the convo with a recap of Trump’s “mental lapses,” which he claims are intentional, but the panel thought otherwise.
Goldberg, who reminded her co-hosts that Trump once thought Frederick Douglass — who died in 1895 — was still alive, wondered if the 2024 hopeful is suffering cognitive issues or if his lapses really are intentional, as he insists.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who previously worked with Trump, told her co-hosts that she sees “a real decline” in her former boss, while Sunny Hostin suggested Trump’s confusion is somewhat intentional.
“We’re seeing a cognitive decline, but we’re also seeing some dog whistles from him,” she began.
When Goldberg asked if Hostin thinks Trump’s remarks are “purposeful,” she replied, “I think he’s mixing them all in. I think he’s having the cognitive decline and then when he catches himself making mistakes, he says, ‘Well you know, ’cause Obama is really Biden’s boss,’ that is a dog whistle to the white supremacists of the country that are like, ‘I don’t want a Black man in charge again!’ That’s what’s happening.”
Goldberg exclaimed, “It’s too late! You can’t undo that. It already happened. Deal with it!”
Behar echoed Hostin’s words, arguing that Trump “appeals to the racist section of his base that doesn’t want a Black guy to get any kind of credit.”
The View‘s debate comes after Trump defended himself on his Truth Social platform on Monday (Nov. 27), per Business Insider. The one-term POTUS insisted that his continual confusion of Biden and Obama was intended.
“Whenever I sarcastically insert the name Obama for Biden as an indication that others may actually be having a very big influence running our Country, Ron DeSanctimonious and his failing campaign apparatus, together with the Democrat’s Radical Left ‘Disinformation Machine,’ go wild saying that ‘Trump doesn’t know the name of our President, (CROOKED!) Joe Biden. He must be cognitively impaired,'” he wrote. “No, I know both names very well, never mix them up, and know that they are destroying our Country.”
The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.