The comedian Joy Behar personally apologized to Vice President Mike Pence for comments she made mocking his religious faith, Disney CEO has Bob Iger revealed during a Q&A session for Disney shareholders on Thursday.
Behar, who co-hosts the ABC daytime political talk show The View, said last month that Pence suffered from a “mental illness” if he believed that Jesus was speaking to him.
“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus,” Behar said. “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.
National Center for Public Policy Research general counsel Justin Danhof criticized Iger and Disney, which owns ABC, calling the comments “strange when trust in media is at an all-time low.”
Danhof, during the Q&A, also told the Disney boss that ESPN had become “24/7 anti-President Donald Trump tirade channel.”
“What do you say to the tens of millions of Christians, and President Trump supporters, that your networks have so blatantly offended and ascribed hateful labels?” Danhof asked of Igner. “Specifically, do you think, like Mrs. Hostin and Mrs. Behar, that the Christian faith is akin to a dangerous mental illness?”
“I don’t know where I start. First of all, Joy Behar apologized to Vice President Pence directly,” Igner responded. “She made a call to him and apologized, which I thought was absolutely appropriate.”
Pence criticized ABC over the comments for what he described as an example of “religious intolerance” and an “insult to the vast majority of Americans.”
“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.”
Over 30,000 callers complained to ABC over the programming following a campaign by Media Research Center president Brent Bozell to target the network’s advertisers.
Behar has built a reputation as one of the most vocal critics of conservatives and President Trump. Just last month, she suggested that attendees of Conservative Political Action Conference have a “penchant for Nazis.”
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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