While some establishment Democrats are joining conservatives in expressing outrage over Rep. Al Green (D-TX) heckling President Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s joint address to Congress, The View’s Sunny Hostin railed against Democrats for not walking out en masse when Green was escorted out.
Mere minutes after Trump began his speech, Green stood up and began shouting “you have no mandate” to cut Medicaid at the president, prompting Republicans to drown him out with chants of “USA!” and loud jeers. With the Texas lawmaker refusing to back down, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson eventually called for the sergeant of arms to escort Green out of the chamber while gleeful conservatives cheered and sang “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
The moment, which was one of many planned protests and walkouts staged by the Democrats, was roundly mocked by not only conservatives but centrist cable news pundits. CNN commentator David Axelrod, a former adviser to Barack Obama, said he thought “what Al Green did was despicable” while urging Democrats to “try and solve problems and heal our differences.”
During Wednesday’s broadcast of The View, Hostin stated that she didn’t watch the address live so as not to add to the television viewership, noting that the president is extremely sensitive about television ratings. At the same time, the liberal host said she was “looking for signs of an opposition party” during the speech, adding that is “what the Democratic Party must be at this point.”
The Democrats’ response, according to Hostin, was sorely lacking.
“I think that what I saw when Rep. Al Green stood up and said you don’t have a mandate to take away Medicaid and he was tossed out, I expected the rest of his Democratic caucus — the rest of his colleagues — to walk out with him,” Hostin exclaimed while the studio audience cheered.
“Because alone you can survive but together you thrive,” she continued. “That is the energy that we need. They should have stood with him in solidarity!”
Insisting that Democrats need to show a “sense of urgency as we move forward,” Hostin went on to say that “we cannot do it the way we have in the past” because the country is on the precipice of collapse.
“This is not normal,” she exclaimed. “It is a five-alarm fire, and what I want to say to the Democrats is you can’t play by the rules with a party that has thrown away the rulebook. You cannot do it.”
Resident conservative panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin, meanwhile, said that she “thought the antics on the floor were not helpful” and that Green “waving a cane” isn’t the “optics that the Democrats want in this.” Still, she praised Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s official Democratic response to Trump’s speech, which saw the Michigan lawmaker appealing for bipartisanship, as “masterful.”
Whoopi Goldberg, on the other hand, brought up Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s interruptions during Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last year, noting that the former president “engaged” with the MAGA congresswoman rather than have her tossed out.
“See, all of this snowflake behavior of the Republicans,” Goldberg snarked. “You know, you can’t take it. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.”
