Joy Behar Got DRAGGED For Clownish Claims About Jesus… But They MISSED Something

The women on the View tried to join in the dunking on Trump over that creepy AI image he posted. But one of them got so enthusiastic in her denunciations that she started lying about Jesus, which negated the entire ‘moral high ground’ they tried to hit him from.

Yesterday’s show on the View tried to be a ‘gotacha’ moment against Trump.

First The View’s viral stupidity
…before we take a closer look at the question they Failed to ask.

Like so many such stories, it began with a Trump tweet. Or, in this case, Truth Social post.

Christians of various backgrounds did not appreciate the AI image depicting Trump in a way-too-divine savior look to him. Doug Giles, our site owner, took time to personally denounce it in a story we ran yesterday: Trump Thinks He’s Jesus? – I Think Not.

No punches were pulled in that story.

The View is technically part of the ‘News’ arm of ABC. So what do you suppose they did? The same thing they always to — downplay any story that hurts the political left and amplify any story that could sow discord on the right.

With a very public between Trump and the Pope, AND Christian pushback against the AI image (opinions ranging from ‘in bad taste’ to ‘blasphemy proper’) the View thought they hit pay dirt. But nuance and level-headedness has NEVER been part of Behar’s brand.

If you’ll recall, when it suits her, she’s been happy to bash ALL Christians. Recall this quote from 2018:

A Washington Post writer once said that evangelicals are “poor, ignorant and easy to command.” Well, at least he didn’t say we were mentally ill. Until now that is. On a recent segment of “The View,” Joy Behar took aim at Mike Pence’s belief that God speaks to him. Responding to a comment by another host, Behar said, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another when Jesus talks to you. That’s a mental illness if I’m not correct. Hearing voices.”

That’s a sign of how ignorant elites truly are about beliefs and practices common to something like two billion Christians. — Christian Post

Whenever she opines about Christianity, she’s not doing so as a ‘defender of the faith’ so much as a cynical Machiavellian sowing discord in an enemy camp. Not even a year ago, she was very ‘concerned’ that the next pope might be ‘conservative’ and ‘anti-gay’.

She, like many (all?) of her colleagues, has an agenda. Everything else is bent in service to that greater goal.

We’ll give you the quote that got her dragged. (Even her costars tried to pump the brakes.) Then the longer context. We’ll even drop a cleaned-up version of the Youtube-generated context at the end for people to draw their own conclusions.

If anyone care to watch the full 7 or 8 minutes, here’s the entire clip in its context. (If you’d rather skim it, just skip down to the transcript.)

The part of it where Joy went totally off the rails comes right here:

Joy Behar: “Jesus himself did not run around saying, ‘I’m the Messiah, I’m the Messiah.’”

Alyssa Farah Griffin: “Ehhhhh.”

Sara Haines: “That’s exactly what Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah!’”

Joy Behar: “No, he did not! Jesus was more modest than that. Listen I knew Jesus,… pic.twitter.com/FNTIiczhRC

— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) April 14, 2026

Even Joy’s costars tried to fact-check her in real time. But she was like a dog on a bone, and was NOT backing off from what she must have assumed were her ‘brilliant insights’ and criticisms. If you pay attention, you will notice

What’s that Joy? You think Jesus claiming to be the Messiah would make him a ‘Narcissist’? It’s WAY worse than that, dear. Not only did he straight up say He was the Messiah (John 4:25,26; 9:35-41); the Christ, the son of God who would sit in glory and come in judgment (Matt 26:62-62), the Son of the Living God (Matt 16:15-17).

Jesus claimed to be personally DIVINE.

As CS Lewis famously said, that leaves only three options: Liar, Lunatic, or LORD. He can’t merely be another ‘good teacher’ someone like Joy can leverage for political hackery. That it itself is just as much a form of blasphemy as the charge they are trying to level at Trump.

The one GOOD question they raise here isn’t one they properly pursue. It’s the question of Vance defending Trump for the photo. The full-throated denunciation can be found on the post we already mentioned by our site’s owner and those points stand on their own merits.

The REAL Question Joy FAILED To Ask

The REAL question they whiffed on is this: was the Veep playing the coward by dismissing the photo as a ‘bad joke’.

Was Vance right to defend Trump here?

We’ve already seen what folks dunking on him would say. But Christian charity would require us to pause a moment before rushing to condemnation, hear the defence as well as the prosecution, and steel-man the reasons he might give to defend his reply before weighing the two theories against one another.

Drawing your own conclusions, is a step we will leave to the conscience of our readers.

To play the devil’s advocate we need to ask: If he were giving such an answer in good faith, what would that look like?

Question about the image’s origin

First, the history or ‘providence’ of the image he posted matters.

If he personally sees himself as a messianic figure in America and he (or a subordinate) commissioned this image to convey that? It’s hard to defend this as anything short of robbing Christ of the unique glory and role due His Holy Name.

It’s sin when our side does it with beloved politicians, just as it is sin when the other side does it with, say, Anthony Fauci, George Floyd (and another one), or Stacey Abrams.

If someone ELSE made it, we need to ask some follow-up questions.

As it turns out, someone else DID make it.

Who made it?

A Trump super-fan named Nick Adams has now deleted the original post, but the original Feb 4th post can still be found here. As you can see for yourself, this is the photo posted and later deleted by Trump.

Someone online queried Grok and learned that Nick also posted another slightly different image like it later that month, but this one was the very same image Trump used in his post.

This removes Trump and his team from any claims that they were responsible for the creation or alteration of the original image meaning that allegations of idolatry in the creation of such an image ought to land at the feet of the artist who made it. (For reference, here’s another one of Nick’s images in which the Gold-medal hockey team is depicted in a format that looks suspiciously similar to the placement of God in Michelangelo’s ‘The Creation Of Adam’.)

A question of judgment

The question moves to the judgment of Trump (or his team) in running with this image.

The original caption of the offending image was ‘America has been sick for a long time. President Trump is healing this nation.’

Taken at a purely political level, after one year in office, with the border closed, government staff down to sizes not seen since the Kennedy administration, the murder rate down 20%, something like 6 names scratched off the top ten most wanted list, and some very positive economic numbers at the time, the notion of a doctor at the bedside of a sick patient would not be a the worst metaphor for the previous year’s changes. Especially when contrasted against the willful mendacity of the Biden administration.

But it’s hard to see an image as ‘purely political’ the minute you include a glowing hand or clothes with a long and storied association with Jesus in historical art.

Arrogance or bad taste?

The next question we would need to decide is whether reposting an obvious Christ reference was ego, or bad taste. Does Trump have an actual messiah complex? Is he just a crass man who plays far too fast and loose with sacred things? Or is he a meme troll who thought this might fall within acceptable fair use?

Past is prologue…

‘Mean Tweets’ are practically Trump’s brand by now. No surprise there.

Does he play fast and loose with religious imagery? We’ve seen him post a photo of himself dressed as the pope. Did he genuinely think of himself as the best qualified candidate? Or was he just popping off online? However strict or lenient your answer to that question will shape your opinion more broadly.

It’s worth remembering, it’s not just religious imagery he likes to co-opt to pump the air in his own tires either. Remember when the official White House account posted Trump as ‘Superman‘?

In his first term, there was an expression used by both supporters and critics about whether you ‘take Trump seriously or literally’.

Ego trip or massive marketing fail?

Is this an example of someone who has let the power go to his head? Some will come to that conclusion. Many have.

Or did a New York Real Estate promoter pick up and run with an existing image thinking it was a ‘safe’ metaphor to brag on his leadership awesomeness, only to find the ‘marketing attempt’ not only failed to impress, but offended the audience to which it was directed?

The question isn’t whether Trump is crass. That has been both his superpower and his kryptonite. Many of us find our greatest flaw and our greatest strength stem from the same personality trait. Trump is no different.

A question of malice

Did this post came from malicious intent, or was it merely The President’s biggest blunder so far. Everything hinges on how you resolve that question.

…Bringing us back to the Vice President’s answer

1. If Vance went through this decision tree and decided the post was rooted in malice and arrogance? It is absolutely fair to call out moral cowardice in giving Trump the ‘humor’ excuse.

But that cuts both ways because:

2) If the decision tree lands him at ‘blunder’? The ‘bad joke’ framing tracks.

Especially when it describes a President whose 2 (three?) successful political runs came on the back of many dodgy Memes.

And now… the transcript:

---

[2:00] Whoopi Goldberg: Welcome to The View. Yes. Woo! Lordy. Yes! Well. Hey, y’all. It’s so good to see you. I have a seat. Have a seat. We’ll tell you what’s been going on. Because yesterday, you know who finally deleted that social media post appearing to show him as Jesus? Maybe he took it down because the MAGA supporters and Christian conservatives lost their minds over it. Now the White House is offering some different explanations on the post. Please take a look.[2:33]

Trump (clip): Did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake news could come up with that one. So I, I had, I just heard about it and I said, how did they come up with that? It’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better.[2:53]

JD Vance (clip) I think the president was posting a joke, and of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor. I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, of, you know, what’s going on in the Catholic Church and let the president United States stick to dictating American public policy.[3:17]

Sunny Hostin: I thought that was blasphemy. As a Christian, I was very offended.[3:19] Joy Behar: I don’t know why the president is getting so desperate for attention that he feels the need to mock 1.4 billion Catholics.[3:28]

Jon Stewart (clip) Do you even care about lying to us anymore? Is it over? Is this relationship gone still? Your lies used to have a real spark.[3:40]

Whoopi Goldberg: So religious conservatives, are they going to forgive him for this? I mean, is the base going to believe that he thought he was? It was portraying him as a doctor?[3:50]

Joy Behar: Well, he seems to really believe that American people are so stupid that they would believe that, you know, light is emanating from a doctor’s hands, for example. And he’s typically my…[4:02]

Sara Haines: Doctors don’t do this to me. Yeah. Or where’s that? And they usually don’t, you know, I’m married to a doctor. I’ve never seen him in that outfit. That particular… Maybe you should take a look. Great. That’s a good outfit to give him.[4:12]

Panelist (laughter/reaction): As a gift. You know, clearly, when Trump watches The Pit, he sees this next image. It’s… I think we have it. I actually… Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, one thing, you know, we know that he’s incompetent and a liar and a liar, but he kind of was a better liar before. I’m questioning now, the fact that he’s declining so much that his lies are that bad, like it’s very obvious he’s not a doctor in that photo. And so in terms of the Red Cross medical professional, he said, yeah, what’s that got to do? [4:49]

Panelist: To be clear, that’s what he said. But you know, to your question, Whoopi, I think, you know, the president has, you know, 340 million Americans where the Pope has 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide…[5:03] Whoopi Goldberg: How many are in the United States?[5:07]

Panelist: Though there are hundreds of thousands. And the approval…[5:08]

Sunny Hostin: For a couple of million.[5:09]

Panelist: Yeah. The Christian Christianity is the biggest faith. It’s the biggest faith. They comprise about 1 in 5 voters nationally. And in 2024, Trump won that group by somewhere between 10 and 20 point margin. But it is actually the swing vote. It’s an independent vote. And apparently right now, as of March 2026, 42% of U.S. registered voters and Catholics had a positive view of Pope Leo and only 41% of U.S. Catholic voters approved of Trump. And so I think this is going to…[5:40]

Joy Behar: Yeah, it’s not a good strategy to alienate all of these Catholics, a lot of them who voted for him.[5:45]

Sara Haines: There are like a few people on the planet that you shouldn’t pick a fight with. I’d say like the Pope, Dolly Parton, like maybe the Dalai Lama, like there’s some people just so beloved.[5:56]

Panelist: You know? But I would add one more.[6:02]

Whoopi Goldberg: Yes. The View. Yes.[6:02 – 6:29]

Panelist (Sara Haines): Thank you. But I realize this isn’t really the focus of the issue with this tweet, which was ultimately taken down. And he very rarely takes tweets down. What stood out to me is when he was posting it. So he posted a series of tweets between 12:43 a.m., 2:35 a.m., 2:38 a.m., and then 4:10 in the morning. I have a newborn with better sleep habits than that. Like swaddle this man, get him a bottle. What is going on?[6:29] Joy Behar: Shouldn’t he be sleeping?[6:30]

Sara Haines: Correct. And it does. There is something to like. Your judgment is not at its finest in the middle of the night. But it did stand out to me that this was a tweet he chose to… our truth. He chose to take down. He didn’t take down that horrible one about Robert Mueller’s death, about Rob Reiner’s death. There was one about 9/11 years ago that he never took down. But this speaks to the fact that he alienated evangelical Christians who are with him. And the Catholic vote, which is a swing vote, because Catholics are not as die-hard of a block.[6:57]

Panelist: That’s with him the way the evangelicals are. He realizes he really stepped in it.[7:00]

Joy Behar: I don’t think he realized who he was going to deeply offend by that. So when he does these things, I think he’s often looking for a distraction, like throwing some faux rage out there. Let’s see everyone flip out. I don’t think he saw his side flipping out, which is kind of a mixed gauge, maybe because he wasn’t thinking straight at 2:30 a.m.[7:17] [Editor note: At this point, the crosstalk became too much for automated the editing-tool to navigate, so we included the raw all caps, unpunctuated auto-generated YouTube Transcript verbatim and unmodified. The part where Joy made weird claims about Jesus is set apart in bold]

[7m 14s] >> AS NONE OF US KNOW, HE’S A MASTER OF DISTRACTION. AND MELANIA HAD A FAUX PAS LAST LAST WEEK WHEN SHE CAME OUT AND STARTED TALKING ABOUT THE EPSTEIN FILES. IT’S LIKE, YOU KNOW, FIRST HE HAS TO COVER THE EPSTEIN FILES BY HAVING A WAR WITH IRAN. THEN THE EPSTEIN FILES HAVE TO COVER THE IRAN WAR. AND NOW THIS HAS TO COVER ALL OF THAT.

[7m 36s] >> BUT ONE THING I WOULD LIKE TO REMEMBER IS IN MATTHEW AND MARK IN THE BIBLE, JESUS ALERTS HIS DISCIPLES TO NOT BE DECEIVED BY FALSE PROPHETS WHO WILL CLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE THE CHRIST, PERFORMING GREAT SIGNS AND WONDERS. EVERY TIME HE DOES THESE THINGS I CAN’T HELP BUT THINK, IS HE? IT’S REALLY ON THE NOSE HERE. LIKE HE’S LITERALLY PRETENDING TO BE THE COMING OF CHRIST.

[7m 57s] >> AND LET’S FACE IT, SOME OF HIS SUPPORTERS HAVE LIKENED HIM TO A SAVIOR LIKE FIGURE. AND I REALLY HOPE AT THIS POINT THAT THEY REALIZE THAT THAT HE IS A FALSE PROPHET.

[8m 7s] >> BUT THEY WERE KIDDING. THEY WERE KIDDING WHEN THEY WERE DOING THAT IN A WAY THEY DON’T REALLY BELIEVE THAT.[8m 10s] >> I THINK THEY DO.

[8m 11s] >> THERE WAS THE.

[8m 12s] >> VIDEO OF HIS.[8m 13s] >> SPIRITUAL ADVISER, PAULA WHITE, THAT I THINK A LOT OF CHRISTIANS WERE VERY CONCERNED.

[8m 18s] >> BY, BUT JESUS HIMSELF DID NOT RUN AROUND SAYING, I’M THE MESSIAH. I’M THE MESSIAH. JESUS KIND.

[8m 24s] >> OF DID SAY HE WAS.

[8m 26s] >> SUPPOSED TO HAVE A LITTLE BIT. WELL, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT JESUS SAID. I AM THE. YOU KNOW WHAT? HE DID NOT. IT’S BEEN A MINUTE SINCE HER CATHOLIC. THE POPE’S GOT IT. HE’S GOT GOD.

[8m 34s] >> SHE JUST SAID, I KNEW JESUS.

[8m 39s] >> JESUS WAS NOT NARCISSISTIC LIKE THIS GUY. BUT WHEN YOU.

[8m 42s] >> ARE THE MESSIAH, IT’S NOT NARCISSISM TO SAY IT.

[8m 44s] >> YES IT IS.

[8m 45s] >> WHEN YOU ARE THE MESSIAH.

[8m 47s] >> YES, I’M GOING TO MOVE THIS ALONG BECAUSE THIS IS LIKE IT’S TOO MUCH FOR ME. THE POPE HAS GOD WITH HIM. YES. YOU KNOW, GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF THIS. GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF HIM. AND NOBODY BELIEVES YOU WERE A DOCTOR. NOBODY.

[9m] >> NO, NO, NOT EVEN SANJAY GUPTA.

[9m 1s] >> YOU’R PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE IT. NOBODY BELIEVES IT. THEY ALL SAW WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO, AND YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE SOME SORT OF WEIRD STATEMENT. AND I WOULD CAUTION THE VICE PRESIDENT THAT ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THE POPE IS SUPPOSED TO DO IS TO MAKE US AWARE THAT WAR IS WRONG, AND WE SHOULD FIND OTHER WAYS TO DO THINGS BEFORE WE GO TO WAR.

[9m 27s] >> AND JESUS SAID THAT AS WELL.

[9m 28s] >> JESUS CAME IN PEACE. I’M GOING TO POINT.

[9m 31s] >> OUT THAT OTHER.

[9m 32s] >> PEACEMAKERS SAID THAT IS THAT.

[9m 35s] >> AND JD VANCE IS THE HIGHEST RANKING CATHOLIC IN THIS ADMINISTRATION. WELL, WE SHOULD.

[9m 38s] >> BE FINE.

[9m 39s] >> HE MAY NEED TO GO BACK TO SUNDAY SCHOOL.