ABC’s Behar: Media made snap judgments on Covington students ‘because we’re desperate to get Trump out’

Joy Behar, a co-host of “The View,” said Tuesday that the media sometimes makes snap judgments because “we’re desperate to get Trump out of office.”

Behar was talking about the controversy surrounding the Covington High School students who were videoed at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday.

“So many people admitted they made snap judgments before these other facts came in,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, referring to video that showed Covington student Nick Sandmann, who was wearing a red “make American great again” hat, face-to-face with Nathan Phillips, a Native American activist.

{mosads}“Is it that, we just instantly say ‘that’s what it is,’ based on what we see in that moment and then have to walk stuff back when it turns out we’re wrong,” Goldberg said. “Why is that? Why do we keep making the same mistake?”

“Because we’re desperate to get Trump out of office,” Behar said to laughter from the audience. “That’s why.”

“Not everybody, though,” co-host Abby Huntsman responded.

“I think that that’s the reason. I think the press jumps the gun a lot because … we have so much circumstantial evidence against this guy that we’re basically hoping that, you know, Cohen’s got the goods,” Behar said. “It’s wishful thinking.”

A number of press accounts of the incident involving Sandmann and Phillips focused on the Covington students surrounding Phillips, with some reports saying the students were mocking and harassing Phillips.

Since then, other videos have emerged that paint a much more complicated picture of the entire event, and suggest that there was little if anything confrontational about it.

A number of people on the right and the left have criticized the media, as well as people on social media, for jumping the gun with criticism of the students.

Sandmann in an interview on Wednesday with “The Today Show” said he was respectful of Phillips, and the two have talked of meeting one another again.