Joy Behar alleges National Guard is trying to ‘stop’ future elections in US cities

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: ‘The View’ co-host Joy Behar baselessly claimed on Tuesday, October 7, that the National Guard will prevent citizens from voting in future US elections.

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, DC, and Memphis, Tennessee, and has also planned to send troops to reduce crime in Chicago, Illinois.

Joy Behar criticizes Trump’s National Guard move

Joy Behar said on Tuesday, without a shred of evidence, that Trump is deploying the National Guard to “stop” future elections rather than to fight crime.

“This is a pretext to stop the next election. That’s what I think it is,” she said.

The panel discussed Trump’s orders to deploy troops to Portland and Chicago and criticized the move. The president said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops after a federal judge blocked his administration from sending National Guard units to Portland.

“This is in order to make the case, because in all of their minds, they now believe they have carte blanche to do whatever they want to,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said during the segment.

Behar added that the National Guard will prevent Americans from voting. She said, “And if they stop us from voting, that’s the one thing people have.” 

“It’s the one thing that makes us very different from lots of other countries. Our votes – they do count. I do know that they count,” Goldberg replied.

She added, “I think people will figure out how to vote. One thing I believe I know about Americans is they don’t want to be told what to do… They don’t want a dictatorship.”

Moreover, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin also mentioned that most Americans do not support troops being deployed in cities and argued that Trump is using it as a political tactic against Democrats. 

Crime rate drops in Washington 

Violent crime in Washington, DC, dropped by 17%, and property crime fell by 18% within 30 days after Trump deployed the National Guard, a report revealed.

Democratic Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser said on August 27 that she was grateful for the president’s efforts to combat crime in the city and had been cooperating with federal forces.

Meanwhile, federal authorities in Memphis made 321 arrests in the first seven days of the Memphis Task Force’s operation, according to the Department of Justice.

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson requested that Trump not send the National Guard to their city during an August 25 press conference, claiming the move would be unconstitutional.

Notably, at least 54 people were shot and seven were killed over Labor Day weekend alone in Chicago.

Moreover, the number of homicides in the city reached a 25-year high in 2021 and has remained significantly higher than levels recorded over the past decade, according to The Chicago Tribune.