Ron DeSantis doubled down this week on claims that slavery actually benefited Black people — all the while claiming that he wasn’t the one who picked a fight on this issue — and Joy Behar thinks she knows why. According to the ABC host, DeSantis continues hurting his chances with Black voters because he knows they won’t vote for him anyway.
Behar’s assertion came during Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” as she and her co-hosts were discussing the Republican presidential hopeful’s interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. During that interview, DeSantis claimed that he and he his team aren’t the ones who picked the fight, but rather that they’re responding to Vice President Kamala Harris’ “lies.”
To that, moderator Whoopi Goldberg was visibly angry, but Behar offered her theory on why DeSantis continues to dig in on the issue.
“He doesn’t want the Black vote ’cause he knows he’s never gonna get it,” Behar said. “So, you know, he says a lot of racist things. This is just one of them.”
Behar added that it’s all part of his “anti-woke” agenda, and is just pandering to that crowd. But Whoopi took a moment to make it very clear what “anti-woke” means in this case.
“The anti-woke means, you know, ‘whatever Black people are talking about, they don’t — you shouldn’t be listening to what happened,’” Whoopi said. “But the history is the history. The country is the country, and we know what happened!”
Meanwhile, host Alyssa Farah Griffin couldn’t get over the fact that DeSantis continues to push this false idea that slavery benefited Black people even after Black members of his own party called him out for it.
“They condemned him, and he doubled down!” she said. “He started arguing with them and like, how dare the white men around Ron DeSantis, and him included, Blacksplain to Black Republicans how they should feel about slavery.”