‘The View’ Star Defends Trump Against Hunter Biden’s Dictator Claim

Hunter Biden declared that President Donald Trump is already a “dictator” and that American democracy is effectively dead — but even longtime Trump critic Ana Navarro wasn’t willing to go that far.

During the second half of Biden’s two-part appearance on Navarro’s podcast, “Bleep! with Ana Navarro,” the former president’s son unleashed a blistering attack on Trump, insisting the country has already “lost democracy.”

“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.”

But Navarro, who has spent years warning that Trump has authoritarian tendencies, pushed back.

The “View” co-host said Trump may want the power of a dictator, but argued America still has functioning courts, elections and a free press.

“I fled dictatorship,” Navarro said, recalling leaving Nicaragua under the Sandinistas in 1980.

She pointed to the large communities of Cuban, Venezuelan and Haitian exiles in Miami who have firsthand experience with authoritarian governments.

“I think he definitely would like to be a dictator and have no guardrails, have no pushback,” Navarro said. “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 added.

That was considerably more restrained than Biden’s assessment.

Biden accused Trump of using the presidency to target political opponents and journalists, pointing to the prosecution of former CNN host Don Lemon following his coverage of an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lemon has pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges and says he was acting as a journalist.

Biden also brought up Trump’s confrontational exchanges with reporters.

“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 said.

“We have lost our democracy at this point.”

Navarro responded by asking whether he could imagine his father, former President Joe Biden, behaving that way.

“I can’t even remotely imagine,” Hunter Biden replied.

Navarro instead placed much of the blame on congressional Republicans, arguing that GOP lawmakers have failed to provide enough oversight of Trump.

She questioned whether Democrats taking control of Congress in the midterm elections would change things, suggesting her own party may not be willing to play political hardball.

“I don’t know that they have the stomach to do some of the s— that Republicans do without any qualms,” Navarro said.

Her refusal to label Trump an outright dictator is particularly notable given her own history of using similar rhetoric.

At the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Navarro compared Trump’s behavior to that of communist strongmen in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.

“Let me tell you what communist dictators do, and it’s never just for one day,” Navarro told the convention.

She accused dictators of attacking the free press, giving government jobs to relatives and refusing to accept legitimate election defeats.

“Do any of those things sound familiar?” she asked the crowd at the time.

Navarro again went after Trump earlier this year on “The View,” describing him as a “wannabe dictator” and accusing him of having “small dictator energy” after a golden statue of Trump appeared at Trump National Doral following the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship.

But when Hunter Biden flatly declared that Trump had already transformed America into a dictatorship, Navarro drew a line.

The White House was far less restrained in its response.

Spokesperson Davis Ingle mocked Hunter Biden’s comments while rejecting the dictatorship accusation altogether.

“Just like sleepy Joe, Hunter Biden’s brains are fried potatoes,” Ingle said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “We wish him and his family well during this difficult time.”

Navarro had not responded to Fox News Digital’s request for additional comment.

The exchange produced an unusual moment: Hunter Biden warning that American democracy is already gone while one of Trump’s most vocal television critics insisted the country still has institutions capable of pushing back.