Vice President Mike Pence reportedly accepted comedian Joy Behar’s apology for mocking his faith, but he had hoped the ABC television star would make a bigger apology to the “millions of Christians” who tune in to The View.
“She apologized to the vice president, he accepted and said he wasn’t offended by her comment for his own sake but on behalf of the millions of Christians who watch ABC and her show,” a White House source told Fox News. “He encouraged her to make the same apology publicly on the show that she did privately to him.”
Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed at a shareholder’s meeting Thursday that Behar, who co-hosts the daytime talk show The View, apologized to Pence for her comments saying that the vice president suffered from a “mental illness” for speaking to Jesus.
“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus,” Behar said on February 13. “It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct, hearing voices.”
“My question is, can he talk to Mary Magdalene when his wife isn’t in the room?” she added.
Pence described Behar’s comments as an example of “religious intolerance” and an “insult” to many Americans who are faithful.
“To have ABC maintain a broadcast forum that compared Christianity to mental illness is just wrong,” Pence said. “It is simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance.”
More than 30,000 callers complained to ABC television network over Behar’s comments after Media Research Center president Brent Bozell launched a campaign to target the network’s advertisers.
Behar has a history of criticizing conservatives and President Trump on the daytime talk show. On a February 27 broadcast of The View, she suggested that attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) have a “penchant for Nazis.”
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