The co-hosts of The View were divided over the topic of Barron Trump on Thursday. The talk show panel discussed the impeachment hearing testimony of professor Pamela Karlan, who named the president’s 13-year-old son on Wednesday. The women of The View could not reach a consensus on whether this was inappropriate.
The impeachment inquiry was back in session on Wednesday, and Karlan was called as a witness. As a professor at Stanford Law School, Karlan is an expert in her field. However, some thought she took it too far by saying Barron Trump’s name in reference to a larger point about executive power.
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“The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron,” she said.
As the co-hosts of The View dug into the story, it seemed they each already had firm opinions on the story. Whoopi Goldberg started things off by defending Karlan.
“Maybe they missed this part but she was not speaking about the child,” she said. “She was speaking about his name and how it played into what he could not do. He cannot take a title. She was not being disrespectful or nasty.”
Goldberg then summarized the outrage over the comments, particularly as it was expressed by Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz in the hearing, and later by First Lady Melania Trump on Twitter.
“You have to have a sense of humor and a lot of these people do not have it,” Joy Behar said of these accounts. “But why aren’t they concerned about the 70,000 children being held at the border? They’re worried about this one child — who … he deserves respect and love and affection. He’s a lovely kid as far as I can tell.”
Behar then called Karlan’s quote a “pun” while Goldberg described it as a “play on words.” However, the rest of the panel pushed back a bit.
“I might be the only one here that sees this as a pretty sick, and stupid, and a total low blow,” said Abby Huntsman. “You could also read the joke as ‘barren.’ …I think political kids, unless they’re out on the front lines, they’re off limits.”
Sunny Hostin sided with Huntsman in this case, saying that even if the comment was meant to be harmless, Karlan should have been able to foresee that it would cause this uproar.
“I thought that it was so ill-advised and quite frankly, just dumb for a constitutional scholar during a very important hearing — an impeachment hearing — to make a joke about the president’s son,” she said.
Karlan did apologize for her statement shortly after making it, though she still condemned President Trump, saying that she wished he “would apologize, obviously, for the things that he’s done that’s wrong, but I do regret having said that.”
The View airs on weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
