Joy Behar came out with guns blazing on The View after finding out that Vice President Mike Pence visited COVID-19 patients at the Mayo Clinic without wearing a face mask. The longtime host, 77, suggested on the April 29 episode of the talk show that Pence, 60, won’t do anything that could anger President Donald Trump, and potentially cost him his spot on the 2020 Republican ticket. “Mike Pence had a choice: Should I be disrespectful to the doctors [at the Mayo Clinic] or should I be disrespectful to the president? And he knows Nikki Haley could be the next vice president…” Behar said, referring to the former United States ambassador to the UN.
A nationwide poll conducted by Suffolk University and USA Today in December 2019 revealed that 34 percent of Republican voters would favor a Trump/Haley ticket over another four years with Pence. Haley has denied that she would ever replace her “dear friend.” Behar continued her scathing takedown of Pence, saying that he ignored the Mayo Clinic’s policy, which requires all visitors, personnel, and patients to wear protective face masks, because Trump has publicly stated that he’ll never wear one. “If the king doesn’t wear [a mask], the joker doesn’t,” she said.
Pence was roundly lambasted after photos from his trip to the famed hospital in Rochester, Minnesota showed that he wasn’t wearing a face mask, while surrounded by healthcare personnel, patients, and aides all doing so. Pence, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, defended defying the Mayo Clinic’s order, which is in place to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus, by telling reporters that he has tested negative multiple times. He also stated that he wanted to “look [the healthcare personnel] in the eye and say thank you.” He knows that protective masks don’t cover eyes, right?
Joy isn’t the only celebrity to dig into Pence after his Mayo visit. David Letterman told Howard Stern on April 28 that he felt Pence was “taunting these poor people who are bedridden and wearing a mask” at the hospital. “To me, that is just taunting people who are ill, to see that guy walking around in his $40 suit walking around in the Mayo Clinic without a mask.”