Joy Behar reacts to JD Vance's appearance on 'The View,' admits she encouraged him to run for president

Joy Behar and Vice President JD Vance on the set of 'The View.'

In a remarkable moment of candor, Joy Behar said she encouraged JD Vance to run for president and that she was impressed with him because he's "intelligent." Meanwhile, Vance said he was surprised to have received a compliment from Behar, and that the ladies of The View were indeed vicious, but not as vicious as he had expected. 

Behar sat down with the show's executive producer who hosts the Behind the Table podcast, which functions as a postmortem on what went down on a given day's episode of The View. Behar explained during the interview that she wants "somebody with a good heart" to be president, and that she believes people with good hearts tend to be Democrats and not Republicans. But she admitted that during a commercial break, she encouraged Vance to run for president in the future.

Brian Teta, the show's executive producer, revealed that Vance said backstage he was more nervous for his appearance on The View than he was for his debate against Tim Walz during the 2024 race, a remark that says as much about the hostile environment the vice president was headed into as it does about the quality of his debate opponent nearly two years ago.

The longtime co-host of The View, 83, said Vance was right to be nervous, given how the co-hosts were planning to grill him during the interview. "I don't think that he's a bad guy," Behar said. Watch a clip below and see the full discussion here.

Vance said the experience, although obviously hostile to him personally as well as the Trump administration, wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. "I expected them to be absolutely vicious and they were only a little bit vicious," he said during an appearance on Gutfeld! afterward. 

The vice president recalled that during the commercial break, Behar told him, "You know what? You're like pretty good for a Republican."

"And I was like, whoa -- that is a way better compliment than I expected from Joy Behar." Dave Rubin broke down the whole Vance vs. The View showdown on Wednesday's episode of The Rubin Report. Below watch a clip of him discussing Vance's reaction to his journey into the hornet's nest.