On Monday morning, Ann Coulter entered unfriendly territory to deliver her ultra-right-wing opinions about President Donald Trump and the state of America. Nobody melted. Nobody was hurt. But nobody got any smarter either.
Following in the footsteps of conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, Coulter was invited to speak at UC Berkeley in Northern California last month, only to have her speech canceled by the school’s administration, which cited safety concerns due to planned protests. Coulter later said she would hold a speech on campus anyway, with or without support from the university, but then canceled her own speech after losing the backing of the Young America’s Foundation group that had invited her in the first place.
But as Coulter put it on The View, “That chronology is not even worth beginning, they changed their position every five minutes.” She accused college campuses of putting undue “requirements” on conservative speakers, joking, “I'm not going to speak off-campus from a hot air balloon at three in the morning.” Even though she acquiesced to all of their restrictions, Coulter said the university canceled her speech anyway.
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For its part, UC Berkeley has maintained it was still trying to find a time in the future for Coulter to speak. “They were just kicking the can down the road so they could cancel later,” she told the hosts.
The View’s Joy Behar patted herself on the back a bit during the interview, saying, “We backed you up, Ann, because we believe in free speech here and anything is fine.” Whoopi Goldberg also commiserated with Coulter, noting that she recently had an upcoming appearance canceled in Clearwater, Florida, though she wasn’t clear “whether it had anything to do with politics or not.”
“The idea of not having free speech in a country whose foundation is the ability to speak freely is ridiculous,” Goldberg added. “So Berkeley, you made a mistake, man. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. That’s the law.”
But lest there be too much camaraderie with their guest, the show eventually pivoted to a discussion of Donald Trump, whom Coulter backed earlier than most and has (mostly) stood by over his first 100 days in office. Last week, she told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson she was “a little annoyed” that Trump had not started building his alleged border wall yet.
“I still consider Trump the emperor or God, however I'm disappointed with the Congressional Republicans,” she clarified. “You would think that despite his personality, despite everything you guys say about him, half the people who voted for him knew it, we’re trying to get the message through: we really, really want a wall.”
And despite what Trump had to say about the press at his rally in Pennsylvania this weekend, Coulter insisted, “He isn't attacking the media, he is attacking the fake media. There are so many lies about him.”
“You mean the fake news that he has helped put out there, Ann Coulter?” Goldberg asked. “You talking about that fake news or just fake news in general? Because he has lied quite a bit, honey.”
“Well, he doesn’t lie,” Coulter said, but she couldn’t finish that thought with a straight face. She admitted that Trump has “lied one time,” but wouldn’t say which time that was. “He doesn’t lie, he’s a B.S.-er, an exaggerator.”
Explaining the difference between lying and “B.S.” in her opinion, Coulter added, “When he says, you know, everyone's rated this golf course the greatest golf course in the entire world, the audience doesn’t believe it, he doesn't believe it, and he know they don’t believe it, but everyone feels nice.”
Of course, it’s one thing to “B.S.” about a golf course, and quite another to mislead the American people about what will be covered under his healthcare plan or who was really behind the election cyber attacks, to name just two of the falsehoods that Trump put out during one interview with Face The Nation on Sunday.
“He doesn’t lie,” Coulter insisted. “Hillary lies.”
That comment made Goldberg laugh uncontrollably. “I love that you people keep bringing up Hillary,” Goldberg told her. “Hillary isn't thinking about y'all.”
As for the big lie that launched Trump’s presidential campaign — that President Obama was not born in this country — Coulter said, “I am not counting anything until he announced for president.”
In response, one woman in the audience could be heard yelling, “What?!”
