Geraldo recently announced that he would appear on ABC’s “The View,” telling his followers on Twitter, “Delighted to do @TheView Thursday. Wonder what they’ll ask me about.” Well, he appeared on the show with its clucking hens and, as could be predicted, ended up attacking Trump.
To Geraldo’s credit, he started out the discussion of Trump and his relationship with the former president by defending that relationship, saying, “Everyone knows I was close to Donald Trump for decades. You can boo or cheer. We came up together in New York from the 1970s when he was in New York.”
Joy Behar jumped in to agree with Geraldo that lots of leftists had relationships with Trump at that time, saying, “That was different; he was a New York character. I went to his wedding.”
Rivera, continuing with his point after Behar’s comment about one of Trump’s weddings, then noted that he had appeared on Trump’s TV show shortly before Trump announced for the presidency, saying, “Right and I did ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ and then as fate would have it, just weeks after I did ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ he announced for the presidency.”
Geraldo then continued defending Trump for a bit, saying that Trump was nice to him and gave him access to the White House, saying, “So, I mean, how many people have their friend, the drinking buddy — although he didn’t drink, I did — in the White House as president of the United States? He gave me tremendous access. He was always very nice to me, even though he knew I didn’t vote for him. So, you know, I have a different …”
But, predictably, as soon as he faced pushback, Geraldo stopped defending Trump and started attacking him. That came when Behar again jumped in and asked, “What happened to him?” Geraldo said that Trump “became a crazy guy” after the 2020 election, to which Behar responded by saying, “He was crazy before that. What are you talking about?”
That’s when Sunny Hostin snapped, “I mean, he was a misogynist and a racist before then,” obviously trying to use “racism” attacks to silence Geraldo, or at least get him to back off of Trump.
It worked. Geraldo first admitted that Trump had always been very nice to him, saying, “Well, listen, he was always nice to me.” But that niceness wasn’t enough to get Gerldo to defend Trump in the face of opposition, then admitting that Trump is “misogynist and a racist,” as Hostin alleged, saying, “But you’re right. You’re right.”