Bowen Yang managed to make just about everyone in the room lose it during his appearance on “The View” on Thursday morning, when he bluntly joked that JD Vance is “a pope killer.”
The moment came as the ABC talk show hosts praised Yang for his impression of the vice president on “Saturday Night Live,” which has become a regular occurrence since the 2024 election. Yang confirmed that he originally thought there’d be better options to play Vance, but worked hard to get the accent right once he was chosen.
The hosts insisted he nailed the part though, at which point, Yang made a sudden quip.
“Thank you! I mean he’s — look, the guy’s a pope killer, OK?” he said, cracking up.
The quip resulted in an immediate eruption into laughter and applause, as the women at the table tried to collect themselves. Moderator Whoopi Goldberg needed a moment to turn away from the table and laugh, while Sara Haines grabbed her mug and briefly hid behind it, before exclaiming, “There’s our new headline!”
Whoopi then joked that “somebody had to say it,” which Yang readily agreed with. Host Joy Behar was the only who somewhat kept her composure, and immediately jumped in. “He doesn’t mean it literally,” she said, while fellow host Sunny Hostin quickly defended the joke, noting, “It’s just comedy!”
Indeed, Vance was one of the last leaders — one of the last people, period, in fact — to meet with Pope Francis, speaking to the pontiff just one day before his death. It was a brief encounter, after the Pope did not attend a meeting earlier on Easter Sunday between Vance and the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and its foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher.
Pope Francis was a vocal critic of the Trump administrations’ mass deportations, and following his death, many online joked that it was his meeting with Vance that killed him. The official cause of death was a stroke, which sent the pope into a coma and heart failure.
“The View” airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
