Joy Behar: Trump's support for Russia is 'about white supremacy'

Joy Behar, a co-host of ABC's "The View," on Monday said that she thinks former President Trump's stated support for Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the latter's invasion of Ukraine is rooted in white supremacy.

"What do you think is behind it, though?" Behar asked her co-hosts on the popular daytime talk show. "Because I was reading an article that a lot of it is about white supremacy. A lot of this support for Russia and Putin is about white supremacy."

Behar did not offer specifics on the article she cited, but co-host Whoopi Goldberg chimed in, saying, "There are a lot of folks who think it would be a better country if it were more like Russia. I don't agree, but that's me."

Behar's remarks came at the tail end of a discussion about Trump's recent comments praising Putin and punditry circulating on far-right media about the invasion also offering praise.

In an interview last week on "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," Trump said Putin's recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics in eastern Ukraine, which came just before the invasion was launched, was "smart" and "pretty savvy."

"I said, 'How smart is that?' He's going to go in and be a peacekeeper," he said. "That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're going to keep peace, all right."

A number of hosts on Fox News and at other conservative media outlets have been the targets of backlash for comments suggesting the United States should not get involved in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Putin has been widely condemned by the international community for the invasion, which has sent hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing and resulted in dozens of deaths from airstrikes and fighting in the streets near the country's largest cities.

in a recorded address last week filmed before meeting with the Russian Security Council, Putin urged Ukrainian citizens to "take power into your own hands" and overthrow the government in Kyiv.

"It seems that it will be easier for us to come to an agreement than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, who occupied Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage," Putin said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to Putin last week.

"You are told we are Nazis. But can a people support Nazis that gave more than 8 million lives for the victory over Nazism? How can I be a Nazi?" he told his people in an address of his own. "Tell my grandpa, who went through the whole war in the infantry of the Soviet Army and died as a colonel in independent Ukraine."