Joy Behar Warns Against Giving 'Trump the Nobel Peace Prize' for Promoting Boosters

For the first time this year, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Sara Haines appeared together on The View, and not even the virtual broadcast could bring down the mood. Behar, in particular, was in rare form as she discussed Donald Trump's recent endorsement of the COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot, though she warned her fellow liberals against going overboard in their praise of the former president.

"There's a couple things going on, I think," Behar said, when asked about Trump calling politicians who hide their booster status, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, "gutless" cowards. "He's probably going to be running against DeSantis in 2024. Talk about a loser idol. Both of them, two losers running. That's Number 1. So, he has to separate himself from DeSantis."

"But before we start to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for telling these idiots to get the booster," continued Behar, "I think it has occurred to him, finally, if you keep telling people, 'Take Hydroxychloroquine, it's gonna go away, don't worry about it' — I think what he realizes is that he's killing his own voters. That's probably what got into his little brain recently. 'Oh my god, what are we doing? We're knocking off our base!' I think that's what this is about, a lot of it."

TRUMP CALLS POLITICIANS WHO HIDE BOOSTER STATUS “GUTLESS”: #TheView co-hosts weigh in after former Pres. Trump called politicians who hide their booster status “gutless,” with some saying it’s a jab targeted at Gov. Ron DeSantis for his recent interview. https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/Jo5JI85YED

— The View (@TheView) January 12, 2022

Sunny Hostin praised Behar's astute analysis, adding, "It really doesn't make sense that they are killing off their base." She cited recent statistics that found that people living in counties that voted heavily for Trump in 2020 were "nearly three times as likely to die of COVID-19" as those in counties that skewed in Biden's favor. "It's counterintuitive to tell your people not to take the vaccine with the midterm elections coming up because they may not be around to vote for you," said Hostin.

Elsewhere on The View... Former American Idol star Clay Aiken brought his congressional campaign to the ABC talk show this morning and opened up about why he's running to represent North Carolina's 6th congressional district (Aiken previously ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014, but lost to his Republican challenger). "Now, I call friends who are in New York or California and I ask them to come to North Carolina to visit, and they're constantly saying, 'I don't know if I feel comfortable in North Carolina.' And that pisses me off!" he told the co-hosts. "Our state, which as always been this progressive state, is now synonymous with names like Madison Cawthorn and Mark Meadows. And it just really upsets me that our state has become represented by these people who don't represent me."

.@clayaiken tells #TheView exclusively why he's running for Congress again in North Carolina: "It just upsets me that our state has become represented by these people who don't represent me and this was the moment to do it." https://t.co/4fUwqRfSHc pic.twitter.com/N5WjOmIELc

— The View (@TheView) January 12, 2022

Aiken, who has a chance to become the first gay man from the South elected to Congress, went on to say that despite the "progress" the country has made over the past 20 years, it's "a little bit shocking to think about" the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in Congress. "It's really chilling to think that less than 20 years ago, just 20 years ago, I was on TV and scared to death to admit to myself that I was gay," he said. "It's astounding, it is heartwarming, it's inspiring. But it's sad to think that there are a lot of states that still would not be able to elect someone to Congress who is openly gay. I am thrilled that I'm in the one party that actually would, and I'm proud of that."

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.