One of the newest co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” insists she wants to be a “voice” of former President Donald Trump’s supporters — despite her past criticism of him.
During an appearance on “Good Morning America” Monday, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump administration official and new co-host of the talk show, said, “I’m a millennial, and I worked in the Trump administration. I’ve also since criticized the former president.”
“But I still want to be a voice for the 74 million Americans who voted for him, and kind of tell them, from my experience, here’s why I won’t support him again, but here’s what a future Republican Party can and should look like,” she continued.
Finally, Griffin added, “So that’s really what I’m hoping to meet the audience with.”
Watch the video below:
"Our elected leaders oftentimes can't have the conversations we all have around our dinner tables."@Alyssafarah, former press secretary for then-Vice President Mike Pence, talks about joining @TheView as co-host. https://t.co/ieXJuzJ0a5 pic.twitter.com/6he6cyC423
— Good Morning America (@GMA) September 5, 2022
It’s not clear how many Trump supporters watch “The View” because they really want to hear what the co-hosts have to say, and how many are watching just for the dumpster fire moments or to get mad at something the panelists say.
So they may not really care what she has to say on the show.
But to a lot of conservatives, this would be an odd statement for Griffin to make, given her criticism of Trump.
In Nov. 2021, she was asked if she was concerned the former president would impose “some sort of autocracy” if he won a second term.
“I think he absolutely would,” Griffin responded. “There were things he wanted to do while in power the first time that were well beyond the scope of what the U.S. president should be able to do, but oftentimes it was simply the motivation of simply hoping to win reelection that kept him from doing things. It’s very different in a second term, and I think that’s what scares me the most.”
She also claimed Trump would “weaponize the Justice Department against political opponents, going after the free press; he would certainly be open to using the military for political reasons as well.”
If Griffin wants to be a voice against those on the panel who view Trump supporters as white supremacists and domestic terrorists who want to send the country back 50 years, that would be a welcome addition to the show.
A lot of the people who watch “The View” probably nod along when the hosts try to paint Trump supporters as fringe Americans who are dangerous.
So it would be good to have a voice there to explain that the majority of Trump supporters are just regular Americans who aren’t racists, who just want to work and provide for their families and be able to pass on a prosperous country to their children and grandchildren, and that different policy approaches do not make them some kind of dangerous troglodytes.
Whether or not her message will actually win viewers over is yet to be seen.
But even if she is the fiercest voice for Trump supporters on TV, a lot of conservatives will probably see her as a traitor to the cause because of her comments about the former president. And they probably won’t care about her vision for the Republican Party either.
