'The View' Reacts To Harris-Trump Debate Calling It Untraditional and Close To 'Elder Abuse'

The women sitting on The View panel offered their respective opinions on the first Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump presidential debate of 2024. The Democratic and Republican candidates met for the first time face-to-face on national television, and kicked off their debate with an awkward handshake before a nearly two-hour rally moderated by ABC News' Linsey Davis and David Muir. Whoopi Goldberg started the conversation off by calling the debate a "booty whooping" and how she was "quite relieved" by the results of the debate. "Clearly, Vice President Harris kicked some butt. She called you-know-who out for kissing up to dictators, killing the immigration bill, having no healthcare plan, and spewing lies about post-birth abortion." Joy Behar joked that her own dog was afraid after they discussed the "cats and dogs" comment made by Trump, where he repeated the social media conspiracy theory that "Ohio Haitians are eating pets". "She was so tough on him that was almost like elder abuse, like I was watching a woman kick the babooey out of a man," Behar added. Alyssa Farah Griffin -- who previously worked for the Trump administration -- admitted there was a clear debate winner, and it wasn't her former boss. "As I predicted, he melted down within the first few minutes. She laid traps for him, and he flopped right into them," Griffin said. She noted that Trump should have jumped on Harris during the questions regarding "border security". "On the issue he should've been strongest on, border security, he ended up talking about his rallies," she said, referring to him biting at Harris' bait regarding people leaving Trump rallies out of "boredom". Griffin added that if this debate was a "traditional" one, Trump should have pulled Harris up on some of her policies like, why Harris was "for defund the police and isn't now." "But nothing about this is traditional," she added as she began to list the comments made by Trump, including those defending January 6th. "And the best of all, he was asked if he had a healthcare plan after being president for four years, out of office for four, and he said, 'I have concepts of a plan.'" "If you can't get through a 90-minute debate, how can you get through four years?," Griffin concluded. Sunny Hostin compared Harris to her own days as a prosecutor. "I had said from the very beginning that I like the match-up of a prosecutor and felon, right? I like that. And what you saw was that -- you saw Kamala Harris prosecuting a case." "I remember when I was a prosecutor, I had a lot of difficulty pointing to the defendant and saying, 'This man did this,' and the chief of my division said, 'If you can't point to the man and say that he did it, the jury won't point to that man and say he did it,'" Hostin recalled. "So she pointed to him and told him over and over and over again," she said, referring to Harris' body language throughout the night. She also noted Harris saying Trump "was fired by 81 million people," and baited him over and over again. The talk show also had ABC News political contributor and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on to share his opinion on the scheduled 90-minute debate. Christie also has debated Trump six times in the past. "You saw someone who is exquisitely well prepared and somebody who is not," Christie began. "These things are hard, you go out there, you know there are 70-80 million people watching you, and you go out on the stage and you are by yourself." Christie then commented on the fact that the pair are without their team, notes, family and no phones. "So if you are not well prepared things can go off the rails pretty quick," he said before calling Trump an "angry guy". The panel and Christie discussed one of Harris' "boldest" move of the night, going in for the introductory handshake, saying she looked "taller than him" and that it was a "display of confidence" by Harris. "If she threw him off, then he is even stupider than some people think," Christie replied to Behar, adding that he thinks the handshake did throw him off. "She did well last night, but that [handshake] was a layup." "What I thought was one of the most disturbing parts of the whole thing was, he wouldn't look at her," Christie noted. "He didn't do that because he's so uncomfortable."