The audience of "The View" erupted in laughter after Joy Behar joked that Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker may have had a stroke based off some his past public statements.
The ABC talk show was among the liberal entities to erupt after NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns reported Tuesday that John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, still has "a hard time understanding what he’s hearing" and had "auditory processing issues" following an in-person interview.
"I just wanted to add on the Fetterman conversation, what makes the Republicans think that Herschel Walker is coherent, and he hasn’t had a stroke?" Behar asked.
The audience laughed as co-host Sunny Hostin agreed and said, "that's a valid point."
FETTERMAN STILL HAS ‘A HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING’ CONVERSATIONS, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT REPORTS
Behar read off a past comment from Walker where he said that America’s "good air" floats over to China’s "bad air," and vice versa. After the hosts continued to laugh about the prospect of Walker having cognitive impairments himself, Sara Haines expressed disappointment in GOP opponent Mehmet Oz’s campaign for a joke about Fetterman and how his decision to not each many vegetables may have contributed to his May stroke.
Behar also called GOP opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz a "loser," while co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said a "disability or challenge" should not keep somebody from holding public office.
"I could never imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges," she said, reiterating the words of Fetterman’s campaign.
Hostin, who agreed with Behar's mockery of Walker, called the treatment of Fetterman "mean."
Appearing Wednesday on NBC’s "Today" show to provide a follow-up on her sit-down with the candidate — the first in-person interview Fetterman has done since suffering a stroke in May — Burns told co-host Savannah Guthrie that small talk with Fetterman prior to the interview was "difficult."
Liberal journalists who've interviewed Fetterman in the past attempted to debunk the notion.
"Sorry to say but I talked to @JohnFetterman for over an hour without stop or any aides and this is just nonsense. Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk," Vox's Kara Swisher said.
"Here’s my interview with @JohnFetterman from a few days ago. The notion that he wasn’t able to understand is mind-numbingly false," liberal YouTube personality Brian Tyler Cohen tweeted.
Guthrie, citing the journalist objecting to Burns’ assessment, questioned the claim, "Since then, other journalists who have also dealt with Fetterman came forward and said they had a different experience."
Burns defended her report, responding, "Yeah, and Savannah, that’s completely fair that that was their experience. We can only report our own."
Fox News' Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
