Donald Trump Jr. is in the news yet again, this time because he went on The View to defend himself against charges that tweeting out the potential name of the Ukraine scandal whistleblower put the anonymous individual’s life at risk. In spite of an admitted move to “stack the deck” by putting a small group of his friends in the front row of the audience, Don Jr. was repeatedly booed by the majority as he was called out for his hypocrisy.
The first part of the episode starts on the subject of the whistleblower and Don Jr.’s tweet.
“The whole point of releasing a name is to intimidate someone, to threaten someone, and to scare other people from coming out,” said Abby Huntsman. “That’s something that dictators do. I’ve lived in China, I’ve seen that first hand. That’s not what America does.”
Her comments were met with resounding cheers from the audience before Don Jr. went right into his main excuse.
“The whistleblower’s name was on a little website called the Drudge Report a couple days ago, it was in Real Clear Politics. I literally quote tweeted an article that had the guy’s name in the title of the article,” said Don before he moved into whataboutism. “But I wish the outrage would be equal. I mean, there was no outrage when my family got an exploding letter with white powder substance in it.”
Jr. then pivoted by saying that The View’s network ABC is “busy chasing down all of the [Jeffrey] Epstein stuff because those stories were killed.”
.@DonaldJTrumpJr blasts ABC's hypocrisy.
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) November 7, 2019
"ABC is right now chasing down a whistleblower about all of the Epstein stuff b/c those stories were killed. So if we're going to have the conversation about the outrage about whistleblowers you work with CBS who oust the whistleblower." pic.twitter.com/B2UDCbrEiz
“He [the whistleblower] asked to be anonymous,” Joy Behar pointed out. “Your family did not.”
"Name a president that has taken more heat than my father," @DonaldJTrumpJr says on "The View," seeming to forget that a chunk of the country seceded when Abe Lincoln was elected president and that he was ultimately shot in the head and killed.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 7, 2019
Don Jr. appears to think that everyone in the world reads Drudge Report, which is about as accurate as saying that the mainstream media is left-leaning, though he was just as confident in both statements.
The hosts repeatedly pointed out to him that he is a public figure with close ties to the president, dismissing his inaccurate claims that he is a “private citizen.”
Don Jr. also tried to claim that revealing the name of a federal whistleblower is only a crime if the inspector general does it, which was called out as a lie, and that nobody in Ukraine knew that the U.S. was withholding military aid to them, which was also called out as a lie.
When confronted with Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s change in his testimony to say that there was a quid pro quo, Don Jr. claimed he was afraid of “being attacked” by “a vicious left,” a statement that was met by a chorus of boos so loud that Whoopi Goldberg had to get up and clap at them to calm them down.
I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’ve had waffles that were smarter than Junior. https://t.co/TfWTV2kn7j
— Rob Anderson for Louisiana (@RobAnderson2018) November 7, 2019
At one point, Meghan McCain railed on Donald Trump and Trump Jr.’s comments about Gold Star families, the Khan family, and her later father Sen. John McCain, saying “You and your family have hurt a lot of people. “Does all of this make you feel good?”
"You and your family have hurt a lot of people...including the Khan family," @MeghanMcCain says. "Does all of this make you feel good?"
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) November 7, 2019
Trump Jr: "I don't think any of that makes me feel good, but I do think that we got into this because we wanted to do what's right for America" pic.twitter.com/kZADvC6uPX
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the booing was so bad that Goldberg had to talk to the audience about it during a commercial break.
“The booing is f***ing us up,” she said. “It’s messing with everyone’s mic. You can grimace and all that. All we hear is booing.”
To be fair, that’s all Don Jr. should be hearing, forever and ever, until the end of time.