Politics

Joy Behar Quotes Stalin To Explain Why Some People Don’t Take COVID-19 Seriously

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Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Joy Behar quoted former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in an attempt to explain why she thought some people didn’t take the threat of coronavirus seriously.

Behar joined her cohosts on ABC’s “The View” to discuss the news that Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, had tested positive for the virus over the weekend. (RELATED: ‘You Have To Be Clearer’: Joy Behar Challenges Sunny Hostin Over ‘Defund The Police’ Narrative)

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“And just yesterday it was announced that Rudy Giuliani is the latest member of team you-know-who to test positive,” cohost Whoopi Goldberg began. “So what is it — what’s it going to take for people to start behaving themselves?”

Sunny Hostin blamed President Trump’s handling of the pandemic, saying that people were slow to act responsibly because the president had “politicized this pandemic. They politicized wearing of masks.”

Hostin went on to note that Giuliani, as he has been representing the president’s interests in lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election, has traveled around the country. (RELATED: ‘All Part Of The Kraken Plan’: Rudy Giuliani Mocked After Testing Positive For Coronavirus)

“We don’t know when he tested positive for COVID, but he obviously is now, you know, contagious and probably has been for a little while, and is hospitalized. He’s 76 years old which means he is high risk,” Hostin explained. “If someone like Rudy Giuliani who has been so close to the president, and has been his personal attorney isn’t taking it seriously, what kind of message is that?”

Goldberg turned the question to Behar then, asking what she thought it would take to make people “be responsible.”

“Well, you know, I believe in visuals,” Behar replied. “I think that, you know, Stalin — there was a quotation that’s attributed to Stalin, something like, ‘The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.’ I think that people are looking at these numbers and saying, well, it doesn’t apply to me or something, or it’s not going to be that bad, you know, I’ll get over it.”

Behar argued that what the public really needed was to see more pictures of people on ventilators in order for the threat to hit home.

She concluded by saying that she was relieved to see President-elect Joe Biden keep Dr. Anthony Fauci on his team. “I didn’t listen to anybody but Fauci, you know,” she said.