Joy Behar and Rachel Maddow claim media have been 'easier' on Trump than Biden: 'Graded on a curve'
"The View" co-host Joy Behar and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow railed against the media on Tuesday and claimed that they were going "easier" on Donald Trump than they did President Biden with regard to his speeches.
"I think that the press has been a little easier on him than they were on Biden regarding his erratic talking and age. He’s not that much younger. He’s going to be 80 in the middle of his next term, so what’s up with that?" Behar said, adding the co-hosts of "The View" were an exception.
Former President Trump is set to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday in the ABC News Presidential debate.
"He gets graded on a curve," Maddow agreed.
"When you say ‘I’m going to jail my political opponents, when you say ‘it’s going to be a bloodbath if I lose,' when you say all these things that are completely off the chart in terms of radicalism and bizarreness, then every new bizarre thing needs to hit this high bar to count as news. And I’m not saying that’s a good thing. It’s a bad thing. We all need to recalibrate," Maddow said.
Behar jumped back in and said the media was "normalizing this crazy behavior."
"That needs to stop, right now!" Behar said.
Maddow also weighed in on the upcoming debate between Harris and Trump and said the former president "was a little incoherent now," and said it would be interesting to see if he could "hold it together and whether that falls apart after the first few minutes, which is kind of his performance level right now."
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"With Kamala Harris, she’s a very good debater, but she hasn’t debated anybody in four years," Maddow added.
Behar confidently said Harris would be "fine."
The MSNBC host criticized her own network for broadcasting Trump's victory speeches earlier this year in the Republican primaries.
"I will say that it is a decision that we revisit constantly in terms of the balance between allowing somebody to knowingly lie on your air about things they’ve lied about before and you can predict they are going to lie about. And so, therefore, it is irresponsible to allow them to do that. It’s a balance between knowing that that’s irresponsible to broadcast and also knowing that as the de facto, soon to be de facto nominee of the Republican Party, this is not only the man who is likely to be the Republican candidate for president, but this is the way he’s running," Maddow said.
After the network cut away from Donald Trump's victory speech on Super Tuesday in March, Maddow said, "there is a reason that we and other news organizations have generally stopped giving an unfiltered, live platform to remarks by former President Trump."
"It is not out of spite, it is not a decision that we relish, it is a decision that we regularly revisit. And honestly, earnestly, it is not an easy decision," she said.