Friday at ABC’s The View, the hosts spent an entire segment slamming Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson for his interview with porn star Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti Thursday night. The hosts took objection with Carlson calling the outspoken Avenatti a “creepy porn lawyer” in the lower-third at the bottom of the screen and calling him that moniker to sign off the interview.
After playing the clip from last night’s contentious and cringe-worthy interview on Carlson’s show, even the View audience laughed at Carlson’s insult of Avenatti. Co-host Abby Huntsman got the first word in, saying it was just two men trying to “out-macho” each other and was clearly played for ratings. After pointing out the chyron, co-host Joy Behar objected. “But they’re so ‘fair and balanced!’” she snarked.
Co-host Sunny Hostin gushed that it was just a sign that Avenatti was more professional. “You call yourself a television host and it's on a news platform?” she gushed. “I mean, that’s something we would never be allowed to do. Our legal standards are beyond that. We wouldn’t be allowed to call a guest that. And to shame a lawyer for representing a client? Why doesn’t he call the president the ‘creepy porn president?’” she remarked as the audience applauded. Hostin stole that line from Avenatti.
But Joy Behar provided her own cringe-worthy statement next, apparently forgetting that Roger Ailes died last year:
“I find it really really rich that they’re calling sleaze on Fox, when who ran Fox? Roger Ailes. Out!”she ranted.
“Also, dead,” Whoopi remarked with eyebrows raised.
Bringing up Bill O’Reilly, Behar kept pressing on.“That whole place was a sleaze factory, and they’re calling out Avenatti?” she ranted.
Huntsman, a former Fox News host, stepped up to defend her network, pointing out that Fox wasn’t alone and CBS and NBC had a lot of problems with sexual harassment as well.
“I’m isolating Fox because they’re calling him a creepy porn lawyer!” Hostin objected. “I want to see the chyron on Fox that says ‘creepy porn president.’ That’s what I want!” she gushed.
Despite all this outrage, the View’s motives are suspect, since they’ve had both Avenatti and his client on their show multiple times for sympathetic interviews, the most recent one being just two days ago. During that appearance, Avenatti calling Carlson a “pig” who is “probably blowing up [his] porn account five times a day.” The View did not have any objections to this conduct from Avenatti, in fact the hosts egged him on once he started attacking Carlson, Trump and other Republicans.
Moreover, the hosts have not even once called out CNN for its use of snarky chyrons, which their news programs, not opinion shows, have employed near daily against President Trump since he became the Republican nominee in 2016. It’s hard to take the View’s objections seriously when they don’t hold liberal news networks to the same standard they apparently hold opinion shows on Fox News.
