'View' host Ana Navarro rejects Hunter Biden's assertion that Trump is 'already' a 'dictator'
"The View" co-host Ana Navarro appeared to disagree with former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, after he accused President Donald Trump of being a dictator on her podcast Monday.
In the second half of a two-part interview on "Bleep! with Ana Navarro," Hunter Biden told Navarro the U.S. has "already" lost democracy under Trump regardless of who wins the midterm elections.
"He is a dictator ... in no uncertain terms," Biden said. "Everybody understands this. He has broken the system. It is gone. It is completely broken."
"They’re going through confirmation hearings right now of his personal attorney to be the attorney general of the United States," he continued. "He has used his position as president of the United States to jail, to attempt to jail journalists. He is prosecuting Don Lemon for following someone into … and we’re not all sitting here up in arms?"
Trump's former personal attorney and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was confirmed as attorney general earlier this month. Lemon has pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges stemming from his coverage of an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lemon maintains he was there as a journalist.
"He goes on Air Force One, and he gets a question that he doesn’t like, and he looks at a veteran woman reporter and tells her to ‘Be quiet, piggy,’ and no one says anything," Biden added. "We have lost our democracy at this point."
"Can you imagine if your father had ever done that?" Navarro asked.
"I can't even remotely imagine," Biden said.
However, Navarro stopped short of calling Trump a dictator, though she said "he would like to be."
"I fled dictatorship," she said. "I fled the Sandinistas in 1980, and I live in Miami, where there’s a lot of Cuban-American exiles, a lot of Venezuelan-American exiles, a lot of Haitian-American exiles. I think he definitely would like to be a dictator and have no guardrails, have no pushback.
"I still have some hope in some of the courts. And I think we still have elections. And despite the fact that there's threats against the free press, we still do have the free press."
She argued that the larger problem was a lack of congressional oversight from Republicans to balance out Trump's power and questioned whether Democrats retaking the House and Senate could make a difference.
"I don't know that they have the stomach to do some of the s--- that Republicans do without any qualms," Navarro said.
Navarro's response on the podcast marked a stark departure from her past comments on Trump, when she warned of him behaving like a dictator and suggested his actions were dictatorial.
During her speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Navarro compared Trump to several communist dictators.
"Let me tell you what communist dictators do, and it's never just for one day," she said at the time. "They attack the free press. They call them the enemy of the people like Ortega does in Nicaragua. They put their unqualified relatives in cushy government jobs so they can get rich off their positions like the Castros do in Cuba.
"And they refuse to accept legitimate elections when they lose and call for violence to stay in power like Maduro is doing right now in Venezuela," Navarro continued. "Now, you tell me something. Do any of those things sound familiar? Is there anybody running for president who reminds you of that?"
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As recently as May, Navarro accused Trump on "The View" of being a "wannabe dictator" or having "small dictator energy" after a golden statue of Trump was installed at Trump National Doral golf course after the PGA Tour's Cadillac Championship.
Fox News Digital reached out to Navarro for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle dismissed the suggestion that Trump was a dictator and mocked Hunter Biden in a statement.
"Just like sleepy Joe, Hunter Biden’s brains are fried potatoes. We wish him and his family well during this difficult time," Ingle told Fox News Digital.