Whoopi Goldberg wants a constitutional amendment: 'You shouldn't be able to run the country from the joint'

"The View" began Thursday with the co-hosts debating a recent statement from former Vice President Mike Pence who, along with other presidential candidates, has suggested Donald Trump should be pardoned if he is convicted of the crimes he's accused of.

"You know, I thought it was interesting that Pence didn't say, 'Hey, were you there when they were saying they were going to hang me?'" Goldberg quipped. "You know, these guys seemed a little shocked that he would have this response."

Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served the vice president in the White House before working for Trump, pointed to her former boss being willing to disregard the Justice Department.

"They're making the argument in 2023, the year of our lord, because you think the DOJ might be political, you throw out all the crimes. That's the first part of the absurdity," Griffin said.

"This should be the easiest question to answer. The facts are laid out in the indictment. Of course, he deserves his day in court. People are innocent until proven guilty. It should be so easy for Republican candidates to answer. This indictment reads very well. By the way, I remind folks, there's way more evidence in the indictment. It's a rock-solid case. Ty Cobb, Donald Trump's old, former attorney, said 'He's, dead.' That's how confident they are in this case. No, he should not be pardoned."

Sunny Hostin maintains that Trump is planning to pardon himself and that somewhere in a safe is a pocket pardon he wrote when president that he's going to pull out at the last minute. The co-hosts then debated the legal merits of that and whether it was something that could be used if it pre-dated the alleged crime.

But Goldberg closed the discussion by asking why lawmakers aren't having a discussion about fixing loopholes that would allow a person to run for office from jail, be elected from jail and even serve as president from behind bars.

A constitutional "amendment will change how we deal with people who come up like this. That's what I want. In many respects, there are things that are coming up that we never had to deal with before. So, we're kind of walking around going, 'Oh my goodness what are we going to do?'" she said.

"Whoopi, we give power to George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, all these liars, anti-American traitors and they stop the progress," said Joy Behar.

Sara Haines wondered why the founding fathers cared so much about the age a person must be to serve as president but not whether or not they were in prison.

"They've made a lot of laws saying here's what you can't do," Goldberg continued. "He's flagrantly wagged these laws in our face. We need to say, hey — see, this is the thing. We have to say, as a nation, we have to say there are lines we're not willing to cross. You don't like this, I don't like this. We can fight it out with the people we elect. But when the people we elect are doing things that we know our parents would have kicked our behinds for — that our parents said you can be anything, never be a liar. We look and watch people lie and we don't go damn."

"You shouldn't be able to run the country from the joint," Goldberg closed. "You can't smoke 'em, you can't run 'em."

Constitutional amendments are exceedingly rare in modern politics. The last constitutional amendment ratified — the 27th — came more than 30 years ago.

Current laws allow some felons to vote after they're out of prison but not while they are in prison. The courts have determined other constitutional amendments apply to prisoners, such as Michael Cohen's lawsuit. He sued saying he had a First Amendment right to write and publish a book while incarcerated and still under house arrest.

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