Who are the key players:
- Joy Behar, host of ABC’s popular daytime talk show, The View
- Vice President Mike Pence
- Brent Bozell, President, Media Research Center, a controversial conservative media watchdog group with a track record of viewing the media “through a funhouse mirror that renders everything–even the facts themselves–as manifestations of insidious bias.”
What are the facts:
- In February 2018, Joy Behar and her The View co-host, Sunny Hostin, made comments on air questioning Vice President Pence’s mental state after video
- ABC received multiple complaints about Behar’s comments on The View – in an unsubstantiated claim originally published on Breitbart and parroted by the Media Research Center, as many as 30,000
- The MRC organized a pressure campaign meant to force ABC to heed their calls for ABC to issue an apology for Behar’s comments, and potentially to discipline the long-time host
It seems safe to say that this claim is inaccurate.
Although it is true that Behar made comments that can be seen as insensitive toward the Vice President, in calling into question his mental state as a deeply religious Christian apparently occasionally moved to speak in tongues, in fairness, that’s pretty bonkers behavior to see in the second-most powerful elected official in the United States.
(In general, most people would prefer their elected officials to have as little in common with the crazy guy shouting at clouds.)
In truth, this claim was part of a concerted influence campaign designed to exist within and help to perpetuate an information bubble. The unsubstantiated claim was first made on Breitbart, a central point of entry into the mainstream for all manner of fringe and conspiracy theories, many skewing toward the conservative.
That claim was picked up and repeated by a network of sites, many of which appear to have been connected, with a focus on distributing the claim across Facebook. Seeing as The View is one of ABC’s longest-running and best-rated daytime television shows, attracting nearly 3 million daily viewers, it was always unlikely that this would be anything more than a tempest in a teapot.