“The View’s” Sunny Hostin says Dave Chappelle was attacked on stage only after former President Trump “released some incivility” around the country.
The 48-year-old comedian was reportedly not injured on Tuesday evening when an audience member tackled him during his performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
“What do you think is happening? I mean, it’s happening on airplanes, it’s happening on street corners,” Whoopi Goldberg, a co-host of “The View,” asked the panel on Wednesday after watching video of the incident.
Co-host Joy Behar said several factors could have contributed to the nation’s current climate: “The pandemic, the opioid crisis, the fact that Trump was out there saying things like, ‘Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you I’ll pay for the legal fees,’ when he had a heckler.”
At a 2016 rally in Iowa, Trump advised the crowd to be on the lookout for protesters carrying tomatoes.
“So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ’em, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise,” Trump said at the time.
“And then Will Smith was the pièce de résistance, if you will,” Behar said on Wednesday, referring to the “King Richard” actor’s infamous slap of comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in March, after the standup comic made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith.
Guest co-host Lindsey Granger pushed back on Behar’s remarks on Wednesday, saying, “This is not a political thing. Come on.”
“I know you want to wrap it all into politics — this is really about security,” Granger added.
“It didn’t happen before,” Behar responded.
“What Will Smith did wasn’t particularly right-leaning, running up on the stage and smacking Chris Rock,” Granger said.
“I do think Trump unleashed some incivility, at least, in our country,” Hostin interjected.
“You don’t know anything about this person that went up there and tried to attack,” Granger replied about the Chappelle incident.
Behar, a frequent Trump critic, shot back that there’s a “certain amount of impulse control lacking in the population these days.”