Kim Klacik confronts Joy Behar's double standards regarding blackface and identity politics during her viral clash on The View. Highlighting West Baltimore's 17,000 vacant homes under 53 years of Democratic rule, Klacik critiques the media's dismissal of conservative Black voices while championing her grassroots success in employing over 200 women. She argues that Republicans offer essential job training and manufacturing solutions often ignored by elites, exposing how "winning with Black women" remains a partisan myth. Ultimately, this exchange underscores the urgent need for authentic policy dialogue beyond performative identity battles in inner-city communities. [Automatically generated summary]
For you to basically chastise me about what Trump has done for the black community, and especially coming from Joy Behar, I thought, you know, you're number one not in Baltimore.
You don't live in one of these dangerous cities.
And you're not black.
And so I just thought, you know, how could you basically tell me how I should be feeling in this situation?
I'm on the ground every single day.
My team is out there seven days a week knocking doors.
We register voters five days a week.
And so I wanted to talk about all the great grassroots things we were doing as Republicans, you know, and I talked about this
in my RNC convention speech.
Republicans usually write off the inner cities.
And so I wanted to talk about the fact that we're actually providing an option
for inner city communities and it just kind of went left.
I'm doing pretty well, but you have had one of those mornings because you went viral and I've wanted to have you on the show, but you were on The View this morning and we're going to show the clip in just a second.
But before we get to the clip that everybody's talking about, did you kind of have a sense that it might go in this direction?
I just want to get your sense of like where your head was at before and then we'll show the clip.
No, I honestly, I wanted to just really strictly stick to the policies, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about my opponent.
You know, I did lose in the special election.
My opponent's been sworn in since May 5th, and I wanted to basically highlight the fact that he hasn't done anything since being in the seat.
So when they kept going on the Trump situation, I thought, you know what?
For you to basically chastise me about what Trump has done for the black community, and especially coming from Joy Behar, I thought, you know, you're number one not in Baltimore.
You don't live in one of these dangerous cities.
And you're not black.
And so I just thought, you know, how could you basically tell me how I should be feeling in this situation?
I'm on the ground every single day.
My team is out there seven days a week knocking doors.
We register voters five days a week.
I wanted to talk about all the great grassroots things we were doing as Republicans.
You know, and I talked about this in my RNC convention speech.
Republicans usually write off the inner cities.
And so I wanted to talk about the fact that we're actually providing an option for inner city communities, and it just kind of went left.
What do you make of the line that Joy said, which is, I have the support of the black community, and that, it was two things.
It was, I have the support of the black community, and that her blackface was an homage.
Somehow, because she's a lefty, when she does blackface, it's an homage, but of course we know if someone on the right did blackface to be silly, or Halloween, or whatever it might be, We know this is not going to be taken as an homage.
Because there's something about that phrase, if you say the black community, the gay community, whatever it is, it's as if these people all think the same thing.
And she has the gall to say it to you.
You happen to be black.
Nobody cares.
But if you're saying the black community supports me, well, I don't think Kim does.
And they're talking about the fact that they were so excited that Kamala Harris was picked as Joe Biden's VP, right?
That was the whole thing.
But it's only win with Black women if you are a Democrat, if you think like them.
You know, if you're a Black woman running as a Republican, then it's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're running, you're a coon, you're Uncle Tom, you're all these things.
And so for me, you know, when you're in the black community and you've been voting for Democrats for over 50 years, they do take our vote for granted.
And that's what I was kind of showing in Baltimore.
You know, for us to move the needle, we have to have allies on both sides of the aisle.
So I don't understand why we do this.
We chastise each other because we want to run in a different party.
I noticed in the white community, you can run as a Democrat or Republican.
They don't actually, you know, chastise you for it.
But in the black community, we have something totally different going on.
So it's to me, you know, they just want you to think the same.
I guess they always want you to do it.
But I look at those women in The View, and I know they are both, or all of them, are millionaires.
You know, they live in a different, basically, society than the people do in West Baltimore.
I know Sunny said she's from Baltimore.
I wanted to ask her when's the last time she's been to West Baltimore, because it is.
We've got 17,000 vacant homes.
We have a poor education system.
And we have crime and violence.
For me, it's like, I don't think they understand because they're not on the ground.
They don't feel it like we do here.
And so that was my point, and I hope that point got across.
Yeah, so I wanna do a bigger interview with you before the election so people can really talk about your ideas, but we just wanted to do this quick in light of the view thing.
But let's just do a couple things, because I think you made some really interesting points also in the interview, despite everything.
Is it 52 years, 53 years of democratic rule in Baltimore?
Do you sense, when you say that to people, like the average person in Baltimore, when you tell them that, when they say, okay, we got all these problems, we got crime, we got drugs, we got homelessness, blah, blah, blah, when you say to them, okay, I hear ya, I agree, we got 53 years of Democratic rule, does that, do you think that actually is starting to get through to people?
Because we see this in all of the big cities that have the problems, they seem to all be run by Democrats for decades, it's just a fact.
I mean, our polling is going to come back next week, I think on Tuesday, but we have a lot of people that have been saying, you know what, I'm voting for Kim Klasek.
They get it.
They understand, you know, voting for the same party, having your vote taken for granted.
You know, this is a situation I posted last year of videos of the fact that there are certain neighborhoods where they can't even get the trash picked up.
I mean, this is a real serious situation.
This is 2020.
It's America and people shouldn't be living like this.
So I don't know why the women on The View would actually, you know, be mad at me for trying to make a black community better and give them a better quality of life.
But that's where we are today.
And that's just how divisive things are and how polarizing it is in certain parts of the media.
So I think there's going to be a lot of people, especially in the black community, voting for President Trump.
You have to think, first and foremost, a lot of people don't even want to admit it because, you know, the cancel culture and the backlash from it.
But people understand.
I mean, when you have President Trump tweeting out, look, District 7, if you vote for Kimberly Klasick, she wants to bring career opportunities.
She wants to bring businesses.
People understand.
That's basically him saying, If she's elected and I'm reelected, we're going to make Baltimore great again.
You know, we were once a manufacturing powerhouse here, and we allowed all those jobs to go overseas during the Clinton administration.
And I think Trump, you know, he's all about the economy, and he wants to bring a lot of those jobs back.
I want to bring that biotech industry here to Baltimore.
And we can do that.
But at the same time, it's like, look, if you're not here on the ground and you don't understand firsthand what people are going through, then I really don't understand how you can comment on it.
You know, I know Sonny said she grew up in Baltimore.
I have not seen her in West Baltimore a day in my life, and I've been in this area for 10 years now.
But at the same time, it's like, look, why don't we come up with solutions?
Why are we going back and forth basically saying who's black enough or who's not black enough?
Okay, so speaking of Baltimore, there was another moment in the clip today where when Sunny asks her first question, you know, she doesn't really say hello, she basically kind of throws you under the bus, oh, you're not living in Baltimore right now, she's from Baltimore.
And you had a great response to her, I thought.
Could you just kind of repeat what you've done in Baltimore and why you care about Baltimore?
Defunding Police: More Than Just Narratives00:03:05
Yeah, so for the past eight years, I've been working with my nonprofits, Workforce Development, We haven't gotten any grants, received any money.
It's kind of something that we did on our own, but we helped over 200 women become gainfully employed.
30% went on to be financially independent.
And so for me, that's what I'm trying to do as a member of Congress, is bring those career opportunities, focus more on job training, putting apprenticeship programs through the high schools.
This is all stuff that I wanted to talk about on The View, but I wasn't given that opportunity.
But that's what it's about, getting people back to work, getting some of that crime and violence down, Because there are opportunities.
And so for me, I feel like, you know, Sunny, if she's from Baltimore and she sees how bad we're suffering here, why hasn't she tried to come home and do anything?
I haven't heard anything that she's tried to do on the ground here.
If this is really truly her home, you know, there's a lot of people suffering here.
So I don't know.
I don't, I don't even know why she threw that in there, but she did.
Yeah, what do you make of just the idea that the people who are screaming the most about racism these days, the people who are screaming the most about sexism, homophobia, the rest of the buzzwords, that in many cases, they're the ones who are pushing it more than anyone else.