Vice President Mike Pence may or may not have been expecting the blow back from walking out of Sunday’s Colts-49ers game — it’s hard to tell with this administration — but now it’s all people are talking about. Of course, the $250,000 plus taxpayer cost for his stunt isn’t exactly helping his case, either. Naturally, Pence’s protest was a leading topic of conversation on The View Monday morning, as Whoopi Goldberg stated the obvious by saying that everybody knew the 49ers were going to take a knee since a lot of this protest was started by the team and they’ve been doing it for literally every game this season.
When Goldberg posed the question of whether or not the publicity stunt — as many are calling it — was worth the price tag, Joy Behar fired in no uncertain terms: “Pence is kind of like a prop. He’s like a prop. Trump says do this, he does it, do this, he does it. He’s like a little prop.”
After some back and forth between Goldberg, Behar, and newcomer Meghan McCain, whose first day on the show was today, regarding Eric Reid’s remarks about taking a knee — Sunny Hostin interjected with perhaps the most astute observation of all.
“What he specifically said in that article is that they met with veterans, and they decided to take a knee because they found it was the most respectful way to protest, better than sitting,” Hostin said. “And I have to tell you, I think about constitutional rights and when you are a public servant, you are supposed to enforce the constitution, protect the constitution. And the government, through Pence and the president to tell people, and almost demand for people not to exercise their constitutional rights, that’s very un-American,” she finished, to thunderous applause from the audience.
Although McCain was unable to see eye to eye with her fellow co-hosts on whether or not kneeing for the National Anthem is or isn’t disrespectful to the country and to the troops, she did ultimately agree that it is their right to do so. That’s more than folks can say for this administration, anyway.