Political commentator Ana Navarro, 49, may be Republican, but that doesn’t mean she supports Donald Trump …or the rest of his Conservative supporters. The guest co-host on The View appeared on the talk show’s Jan. 8 episode to not only share her thoughts on Trump supporters’ invasion of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. — where Congress had gathered to certify Joe Biden’s election win just two days prior — but to also condemn the Republicans who supported the POTUS before the riot.
.@ananavarro: “I am livid at all of those Republicans who have spent four years enabling, normalizing, legitimatizing, emboldening Donald Trump, and who all of a sudden have woken up for their four-year fever.”
“You own this just as much as Donald Trump does.” pic.twitter.com/J4M0HyMwgy
— The View (@TheView) January 8, 2021
“I’ve fled communism, I’ve seen this before. I never thought I would see it in the United States of America,” Navarro, who moved with her family from Nicaragua to the United States in the 1980’s, said after expressing her “shock” and “sadness.”
Navarro now finds the country’s current political climate ironic. “I was so struck by the irony that Republicans, pro-Trump Republicans have spent months telling us Democrats would turn America into Venezuela,” the media personality continued. “Instead, it is Donald Trump who has turned America into Venezuela, a place where dictators try to perpetuate themselves in power by using mobs to threaten and attack their opponents.”
Navarro then told Joy Behar, “I’m livid. I am livid at all of those Republicans who have spent four years enabling, normalizing, legitimatizing, emboldening Donald Trump, and who all of a sudden have woken up for their four-year fever.” Navarro went on to say that the Republicans who have since switched course are “not going to erase in four days” what they’ve “done in four years” and named Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. They are all members of Congress who supported Trump and his challenge against the Nov. 2020 presidential election results, but later changed course in the wake of the riots: Graham urged his colleagues to certify Biden’s win; Cruz said he “disagreed” with Trump’s “language and rhetoric for the last four years” on a Houston TV station, per CNN; and Rubio asked Trump to “restore order” at the Capitol last Wednesday.
Navarro continued to call out the Congress members, saying, “All of them looked the other way and played stupid and were accomplices because they liked his Cuba policy or because he moved the embassy in Israel or because they liked his abortion policy or his judicial nominations and they were willing to look the other way and embrace and legitimize a criminal….a person who is a deranged mad man who has threatened the national security and social fiber of America so that they could get the little bones he threw at them and they wanted.”
To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021
With that said, Navarro doesn’t think the Republicans who are now trying to distance themselves from Trump should be given any slack. “Telling us that we compromised, that were sellouts. No, you sold your souls out to support a criminal and you’re going to have to live with that,” Navarro said. “There is nothing you’re going to say in the next 13 days that’s going to erase what’s happened in the four years.”
Trump has faced widespread backlash for his tweets amid the storming of the U.S. Capitol, in which he called the rioters “special.” His Twitter account was suspended for 12 hours afterwards. After Congress certified Biden and Kamala Harris‘s wins, Trump posted a speech confirming that “a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th.”