President Donald Trump once again siding with Vladimir Putin on the global stage this week prompted criticism from hosts on “The View,” including co-host Joy Behar who theorized that Trump “owes” something to the Russian president.
Speculation surrounding the relationship between Trump and Putin once again began to churn after the Trump administration opposed a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine – which aligned the United States with authoritarian regimes including Russia, North Korea, Belarus and Hungary.
"What does he owe Putin? Maybe he owes something to Putin," Behar predicted on Tuesday’s show.
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The comments came as her fellow co-hosts discussed Trump’s press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Co-host Sunny Hostin agreed with Behar's theory. But the ABC News senior legal correspondent took her view a step further.
"I think this president, unfortunately, perhaps either doesn’t understand geopolitics and doesn’t understand the importance of having allies and the importance of our allyship or perhaps there is a reason why, to your point, Joy, that he is so enthralled with Russia," Hostin said. "I don’t know if it’s because he thinks by getting Russia closer to the United States, that perhaps they’ll ice out China. I think that is a ridiculous reading of the political landscape."
Condemnation over Trump’s posture surrounding Russia was rounded out by co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Alyssa Farah Griffin.
"I just think back to many of our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers who fought these wars to make sure that we were not chummy and didn’t chum up and, you know, as we’re disappearing American history, what else are we disappearing?” Goldberg asked. “Are we forgetting who these guys are? And, it is all transactional. It is all transactional.”