"The View" co-host Joy Behar declared Tuesday that President Donald Trump is not a legitimate president, throwing her support behind the growing list of House Democrats who plan to skip the upcoming State of the Union address.
Behar made the comments during the show's Feb. 24 broadcast, wading into an intra-party debate among Democrats over whether boycotting the address is principled resistance or political malpractice.
Her argument boiled down to this: Trump's conduct in office disqualifies him from the respect the institution demands. Not that he wasn't duly elected. Just that he doesn't deserve the dignity of a full chamber.
As Fox News reported, Behar laid out her case against attending with characteristic subtlety:
"I disagree because I don't think that he's really that. He's a legitimate president in my lifetime, and that includes Nixon and Reagan, both conservative Republicans that I did not vote for. Neither one of them have, would behave the way this man behaves."
She went further, arguing that empty seats are the only tool Democrats have left:
"Sometimes you have to, to make your point, to show that you do not consider that person worthy of your presence."
Credit where it's due: at least two of her co-hosts pushed back. Sunny Hostin argued that congressional duty outweighs personal distaste:
"Just because this president doesn't have decorum doesn't mean that members of Congress shouldn't do their duty, which is to show up and listen."
Sara Haines also disagreed with the boycott position, siding with the idea that Democrats should attend and show decorum.
Behar's comments land as a growing faction of House Democrats announced they would skip the State of the Union entirely (and then did exactly that). Around 30 lawmakers attended an alternative "People's State of the Union" rally near the Lincoln Memorial, organized by MeidasTouch and MoveOn Civic Action. The event reportedly focused on criticisms of Trump's first year back in office.
The list of attendees for the counter-rally reads like a roster of the progressive caucus's usual suspects:
A smaller group, including Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, simply stayed home but did not attend the counter rally.
What makes this interesting is not Behar's opinion. She has never been mistaken for a swing voter. What's interesting is the fault line her comments expose within the Democratic Party itself.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took the opposite position in comments to reporters last week, framing the SOTU as Trump coming to "our house." His reasoning, according to The Hill, was blunt:
"It's my view that you don't let anyone ever run you off of your block."
That's the posture of a leader trying to keep his caucus from looking like it's retreating. And it's the posture Behar explicitly rejected on national television. She disagreed with Jeffries directly, arguing that the boycott was the stronger statement.
So here's the state of the opposition party heading into one of the highest-profile nights of the political calendar: the minority leader wants his members in the chamber, his progressive flank is staging a rival event with left-wing advocacy groups, and a daytime television host is publicly contradicting his strategy while calling the president illegitimate.
The word "legitimate" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in Behar's argument, and it collapses under the weight. She acknowledged, when pressed by Hostin, that she wasn't claiming Trump wasn't duly elected. She was arguing something vaguer: that his conduct in office makes him unworthy of the title in some spiritual sense.
This is a rhetorical move the left has perfected over the past decade. You can't win the argument on policy or elections, so you redefine the terms. "Legitimate" stops meaning "lawfully elected by the American people" and starts meaning "behaves the way I think a president should." It's a word game dressed up as a moral stance.
Nixon and Reagan, Behar conceded, were legitimate despite her disagreements with them. The distinction she draws is entirely about decorum and behavior, which is a remarkable standard from a host on a show that once compared a sitting administration to authoritarianism on a near-weekly basis. The threshold for "legitimate" keeps moving, and it only ever moves in one direction.
The deeper problem for Democrats is not what Joy Behar thinks. It's what the boycott reveals about their strategic posture heading into Trump's address. The State of the Union is one of the few moments in American politics where tens of millions of voters tune in at once. It is, by definition, the largest stage available.
Democrats who skip it hand that stage entirely to the president. They remove the split-screen of stone-faced opposition. They eliminate the possibility of a visible, dignified counterpoint sitting in the chamber. They trade the most-watched political event of the year for a rally near the Lincoln Memorial organized by MeidasTouch.
Jeffries understands this. You don't cede your own house. But a significant chunk of his caucus has decided that the gesture of refusal matters more than the reality of influence. That's not resistance. That's a retreat dressed in protest clothing.
And when your strategy requires Joy Behar to explain it to a television audience, you've already told voters everything they need to know about where the ideas are coming from.
