“The View” co-hosts denied arguments that political violence happens on both sides of the political aisle during Tuesday’s panel.
The panel discussed the Friday morning attack on Paul Pelosi in his San Francisco home. The alleged assailant, David DePape, has since been charged with attempted kidnapping and assaulting a U.S. official’s immediate family member.
Co-host Sunny Hostin read a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll released in January, which found 40% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats said violent actions could sometimes be justified. She and co-host Joy Behar then claimed political violence is a Republican, not a Democratic, issue.
“There is no both sides here,” Behar said. “And a lot of them like to say it, including [Republican Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz when he was here, and I’d like to remind everybody that it was the Democrats — not the Democrats — who stormed the government that day [January 6th] and tried to kill the vice president [Mike Pence].”
Behar falsely claimed crime is going down in the U.S. in an attempt to criticize Republicans for campaigning on the rising crime rate in the U.S. ahead of the midterms. (RELATED: MSNBC Anchors Claim Republicans ‘Are Scared’ To Condemn Attack On Paul Pelosi)
“And the Republicans now coming up to the next election, which is next week by the way, all they do is talk about crime, crime, crime,” Behar continued. “I looked it up. Murders in major cities have fallen by 4% so far in 2022 compared with the same period a year ago. So, the crime is not on the rise, it’s actually going down under Joe Biden.”
The overall crime rate in major U.S. cities has risen in 2022 in comparison to 2021. In New York City, the overall rate jumped by 15.2% in September 2022, compared to the same month in 2021, the New York Police Department (NYPD) reported. While the murder rate in the city went down by 23.5%, the rates of burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto all individually spiked by nearly a quarter.
The overall shootings in Philadelphia have risen by 3% so far in 2022. The city has a year-to-date total of 445 homicide victims as of Oct. 31, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. The total number of violent crime cases surged by 7% in the city in 2022.
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed to the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting that targeted House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, and praised Democrats for condemning the incident. She then claimed people on the right are not calling out political violence.
“Some of this is on your hands,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said. “You like to call people out, well I’m calling you all out. Stop with the ‘That side is not good,’ because this is what it puts out there. It tells people that you think it’s okay to do this. Stop doing it.”
Prominent Republicans, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, immediately condemned the attack on Pelosi on social media. Earlier in 2022, MSNBC covered the assassination attempt on Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by 26-year-old Nicholas Roske for no more than 15 minutes. The New York Times shared a footnote about the attempt on the outlet’s front page, directing readers to a brief article further in the newspaper.