Vice President Mike Pence says recent comments by comedian Joy Behar about his religious faith demonstrate just how “out of touch” she is with the rest of America.
The ladies of ABC’s “The View” found themselves wondering if Mr. Pence has a “mental illness” this week after former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman opined on his Christian faith. Her claim on “Celebrity Big Brother” that “Jesus tells [Mr. Pence] to say things” worried Ms. Behar, but the vice president said she — and ABC executives — should be more concerned with in-house bigotry.
“It is just simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance,” Mr. Pence said Wednesday during an Axios event in Washington.
President Trump’s right-hand man also said that Ms. Behar’s views were emblematic of “some in the mainstream media,” The Hill reported.
“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus,” Ms. Behar, an agnostic, said during Tuesday’s show. “It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness if I’m not correct. That’s hearing voices.”
The comedian shifted her position after co-host Meghan McCain said Jesus speaks to her “every morning.”
“I think that Mike Pence, say what you will about Mike Pence and his religiosity and everything else, I don’t think that he’s mentally ill even though he says he is hearing voices,” she said. “I don’t think he’s that crazy. He has no charisma whatsoever.”
“The hypocrisy here is practically palpable,” the conservative group MRC Action said in an emailed statement released Thursday.
“If someone made a similar statement about Islam, the women on The View and their leftist cohorts would be outraged. As it is, offending the 280 million Christians in America doesn’t bother them at all,” added the group, which describes itself as the “grassroots arm” of the Reston, Virginia-based Media Research Center.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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