“The View” co-hosts suggested Thursday that it is NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns — not Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman — who struggles to converse.
The co-hosts doubted Burns’ abilities after she reported Tuesday that Fetterman had difficulty understanding her questions during their exclusive interview. The candidate has reportedly struggled with auditory processing issues since he suffered a stroke in May.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said any potential auditory processing issues do not equate to cognitive disorders. Co-host Sara Haines then said that he could not understand her questions unless she made small talk without closed captioning from a monitor the production team set up for Fetterman to read off of.
“I thought it was inappropriate that she said ‘during small talk before our interview,'” co-host Sunny Hostin said.
“Maybe she’s bad at small talk, maybe it was her,” Goldberg said.
“I just feel that, I don’t know if it was an off-the-record conversation, if the entire interview was off the record,” Hostin continued. “That is generally not something that you mention when you’re being interviewed by an anchor. The other thing that I had a problem with when she’s describing all of this, I mean I don’t know about anybody else, but I love closed captions. I watch all my series closed captioned because I sometimes can’t understand accents that people use and I don’t understand things and it’s very helpful in terms of processing and I don’t have a cognitive disorder.”
She then cited neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta, who said that Fetterman does not appear to have a problem with understanding and performed well on tests. (RELATED: ‘Don’t Voters Deserve To Know?’: NBC Reporter Presses John Fetterman On His Mental Fitness On His Post-Stroke)
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin argued that the issue is with Fetterman’s transparency on his health, which caused Hostin to argue that former President Donald Trump’s medical records should have been released. Co-host Joy Behar said that Democrats need to support Fetterman because his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, is a “loser.”
Burns doubled down on her observation during a Wednesday interview with “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie, saying that her team found small talk to be a major struggle for Fetterman. She then noted that his auditory processing issues does not mean that he is suffering from a cognitive disability.
Fetterman did not disclose his hospitalization for two days following his stroke in May, leading the editorial board of The Washington Post to question his fitness to serve in the U.S. Senate. The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette editorial board also expressed skepticism on his ability to serve after he pulled out of five scheduled debates against Oz.
