The Watchdog with David Bozell

For years, the ladies of The View have portrayed J.D. Vance as something bordering on a national emergency. Depending on which episode you watched, he’s been a liar, a sociopath, a threat to democracy, responsible for political violence, or part of some grand Trumpian menace lurking over the republic.

Then they finally got him on the show.

The funny thing is that after all that buildup, the interview was kind of a yawner.

That’s not a criticism of Vance or even the hosts. It’s just reality. They covered the topics you’d expect: immigration, Epstein, Trump, race, deportations, and the usual list of controversies that fill cable news every day. Vance defended administration policies. The hosts challenged him. The earth continued spinning.

What stood out wasn’t anything Vance said. It was what the interview revealed about The View.

If you’ve spent years telling your audience that a politician is extreme, dangerous, and beyond the pale, eventually you have to cash that check. You have to show people why.

This was their chance, for an hour on national television.

Instead, viewers saw something much closer to a normal political interview than the years of rhetoric would have led them to expect.

Part of the problem is that The View rarely ventures outside its own bubble. NewsBusters found that the show hosted 128 liberal guests last year. The closest thing to a guest from the other side was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was in the middle of a public feud with President Trump, and Cheryl Hines, whose main political credential is being married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

That’s not diversity of thought. That’s occasional sightseeing.

When you spend most of your time talking to people who already agree with you, it’s easy to convince yourself that everyone outside your circle is either crazy or dangerous. It’s much harder to maintain that illusion when the person is sitting across the table answering questions for an hour.

That’s what I took away from Tuesday.

Not that Vance scored points. Not that the hosts embarrassed themselves. Just that The View spent years building a version of J.D. Vance that couldn’t survive an actual conversation with J.D. Vance.

And that says a lot more about The View than it does about him.​​​​​​

​​​​​​​Take it easy, 

David Bozell
President