‘If That Helps You Sleep At Night’: CNBC’s Sara Eisen Sparks Ire of View Co-Hosts With Trump Defense

 

CNBC’s Sara Eisen sparked some big reactions from the hosts of The View on Wednesday when she offered a defense of President Donald Trump.

Eisen joined the table at The View to guest host and fill in for Alyssa Farah Griffin. While discussing the explosive resignation of Joe Kent, Trump’s appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Eisen pushed back on some of his accusations, showing a clear valley or two between her perception of the president and the other hosts.

Kent announced this week that he was resigning from his position in protest of Trump’s strikes on Iran. In his announcement, Kent argued Iran posed no “imminent threat” and suggested Israel was influencing Trump’s decision.

Eisen said:

I think it’s fair to debate the merits of the war and you guys do that every day and we all do that and whether it was imminent or not but I think what jumps off the page here about this resignation letter which I think we have to just call out here is that Kent writes it is clear we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. Now, there are two things about that. Number one, I think it’s disrespectful and wrong to assume that the United States and the president, especially this president, whatever you think of him, does not act on his own agency and on behalf of the United States of America.

Whoopi Goldberg and Sara Haines nearly jinxed each other when they both jumped in to accuse Trump of mostly acting for his own benefit.

“But on our own accord for the United States. Number two, I think we have to call this what it is,” Eisen said.

“This corrupt president? You don’t think he acts in his own benefit?” a shocked Sunny Hostin asked.

“I’m saying that he acts. He does not get coerced by other nations, like Israel,” Eisen argued.

“Really?! Okay,” Hostin said as some in the audience laughed. “If that helps you sleep at night, that’s great.”

“Wow,” Joy Behar said in reaction to Eisen’s Trump claim.

Eisen eventually got to her second point about Kent.

“It’s also an old-school anti-semitic trope to blame the Jews and Israel. It’s as old as time. When you have problems in the world, you know, blame the media. Blame the bankers, blame the Jews,” she said.

Eisen argued people will feel “safer” when the Iran mission is finished.

“You know what the cost of that winning is?” Goldberg asked. “It’s our lives. It’s our sons’ lives. And this is a war that, you know. Everything everybody has said, yes, the regime needed to change, yes, stuff needed to change. There’s a way to do that. And it’s not by just throwing people in and saying, hey, listen, I could have changed this, I could’ve stopped this, but I decided to let it go. You’re fooling with volunteers.”

“And I don’t discount that,” Eisen replied.

“I mean, I’m glad because I feel like they don’t because if you care about the people that are put in who said, I will give my life for this country, then you respectfully go to war. You do it with respect. This was done not respectfully, and with a plan and an idea of how we go about it,” Goldberg said.

Watch above via ABC.

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Zachary Leeman covered pop culture and politics at outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, BizPac Review, HollywoodinToto, and others. He is the author of the novel Nigh. He joined Mediaite in 2022.