Media

Joy Behar: Republicans pushing Kavanaugh nomination ‘are only interested in retaining white power’

“The View” co-host Joy Behar said Friday that Senate Republicans are trying to push through Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination in order to retain “white power.”

Behar lodged the accusation on Friday, one day after Kavanaugh and the first woman to accuse him publicly of sexual assault, Christine Blasey Ford, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ford, in her testimony, accused Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed and groping her at a party when the two were in high school in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh denied Ford’s claims in his testimony.

{mosads}Behar cited a study from the Brookings Institution that found white people currently make up 61 percent of the U.S. population, a figure that is expected to drop to 49.7 percent by 2044.

“Pretty soon we’ll be like South Africa, apartheid, where 10 percent of white people were running the country,” Behar said. “It seems like the trajectory that we’re on here.”

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg pushed back on Behar’s claim, saying that would not happen in the U.S.

“We hope not, but this is what they want,” Behar continued. “The people who are only interested in retaining white power in this country.”

Sunny Hostin, a co-host on “The View” and former sex crimes prosecutor, said she was “disgusted” by how the sexual assault claims against Kavanaugh have become a partisan issue.

“I’ve interviewed hundreds of victims of sexual assault and I know how hard it is for them to come forward,” Hostin said. “That woman was 100 percent, 150 percent credible. She was telling the truth, in my view.”

Hostin said she viewed “credibility, candor, character and impartiality” to be the most important qualities for a Supreme Court Justice. And Kavanaugh “doesn’t have those,” she said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination on Friday after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) requested a one-week delay in the floor vote.

Flake announced his support for Kavanaugh earlier on Friday but later asked for a delay after speaking with other lawmakers.

“I think it would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to but not more than one week in order to let the FBI do an investigation limited in time and scope,” he said.

Senate GOP leaders agreed later Friday to a one-week delay of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination to allow the FBI to investigate sexual assault allegations against him.