Joy Behar Clashes With Guest Co-Host Michele Tafoya: 'Don't You Believe in History?!'

Michele Tafoya had much to say about President Biden's State of the Union address on The View Wednesday morning. While the guest co-host praised Biden's strong stance on Ukraine, she dinged him for not mentioning China enough, and she clashed with the other panelists when she encouraged them to "stop going backwards" by pointing out Trump-era problems. "Don't you believe in history?!" asked Joy Behar. "That's what this is."

Tafoya opened her criticism of Biden's Tuesday night address with a promise to "fact check" his remarks, including a comment that "the gun industry is the only industry that can't be sued" in this country. When she pointed to parents of Sandy Hook victims' recent settlement with Remington, Sunny Hostin was quick to step in with a fact check of her own. "It was the first time they've been successfully sued because there was an exception to the law," said Hostin. "Understood, but it happened," replied Tafoya. "So, the fact is, they can be sued, and they were sued successfully. That's all I'm doing. Providing a little factual correction there."

With her "factual correction" out of the way, Tafoya turned her attention to foreign policy. "What I would've hoped to hear was a little more about China. We all seem to be so afraid of China, and yet they're not providing any sanctions against Russia," she said. "China's watching. Because if this is happening with Ukraine and Russia, China wants to go in after Taiwan, and that's going to be exceedingly dangerous. Talk about a disruption to the world. That's going to be massive."

"What should Joe Biden do about that?" asked Behar. "Well, there are a lot of people paid a lot more money than I am to figure out what the right answer is to that," replied the NFL reporter-turned-conservative commentator. "But I think we're way too entwined with China."

DID BIDEN'S #SOTU MEET THE MOMENT OR MISS THE MARK? Pres. Biden addressed the war in Ukraine, COVID, the economy, and more in his first State of the Union address to Congress Tuesday — #TheView panel shares their takeaways. https://t.co/eNKkjAt8F5 pic.twitter.com/U10P3eDbAq

— The View (@TheView) March 2, 2022

Tafoya then proceeded to go on a tangent about removing clothes made in China from her closet. "We don't know whose — they use slave labor over there, right? It's awful. They torture their Uyghurs, it's genocide," she said. "So I took everything from my closet that was made in China, and I had half a closet left. It was just a massive pile. I said, 'I'm not doing this any more!'"

After some more back and forth, Whoopi chimed in to praise Biden's calm demeanor. "I'm really glad that we have someone they call 'Sleepy Joe,'" she said. "I'm not going to like everything he does. I'm not going to dig everything. But I want someone who at least can look us all in the eye and say, 'Listen, this is what I'm trying to do.' 'Cause the other dude, whose name I flipped yesterday — I feel like my brain had a whole thing! It just went, 'Blah!'"

"Well, stop going backwards then!" Tafoya said from across the table. "Just look ahead! Stop going backwards."

"You know, it's hard not to go backwards 'cause people keep — listen. Forgive me, it's very easy for folks to say, 'Let's just not go backwards.' But until we go backwards and say, 'Here are the issues—'"

When Tafoya interrupted to say that Whoopi should "be prepared to do that about every single issue," Whoopi, Hostin, and Behar teamed up to shut her down. "Michele, don't you believe in history?" asked Behar, as Hostin cautioned that "past will become prologue if you try to sweep things under the rug."

Elsewhere on The View... Whoopi skewered Rep. Lauren Boebert for heckling Biden about the military during his SOTU speech. "In 2020, she opposed a bill to fund the military because she didn't like Democratic politics," she said. "Don't talk about the military unless you really want to talk about the military. You can't do what they do — that's why we revere them."

Whoopi goes OFF on Lauren Boebert for disrespecting our military members #TheView @laurenboebert pic.twitter.com/VQPHKv2dQu

— The Chat  (@LiveOnTheChat) March 2, 2022

"The minute you poop on them, you poop on them like the last guy did, talking about those Gold Star families, talking about Mr. McCain as not being a hero — who the hell do you think you are, little girl?! Who do you think you are?!" she continued. "You don't have to like this president to be respectful of him talking about the military and his son, who died. You don't have to like him, but you must be respectful."

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