WATCH: Joy Behar Claims President Trump Has 'No Mandate,' Gets Trounced by Stephen A. Smith

There used to be such a thing as integrity in the news business, and there still is, in some quarters - all of the Townhall Media Group sites, for example. And from time to time, you even see an expression of journalistic integrity in places you'd least expect it, like ABC's "The View." In this case, the fomenter of the incident was Joy Behar, the most inaptly-named personality in the media - it's probably been decades since anything within shouting distance of "joy" manifested itself in her demeanor. When talking to the liberal sportscaster Stephen A. Smith, Behar claimed that President Trump has "no mandate."

Smith, while professing to be no fan of President Trump, proceeded to rip her to shreds.

🚨WHOA: Joy Behar was NOT expecting this answer out of Stephen A…

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Here's how that beatdown went:

JOY BEHAR: He (Trump) has only been in office six weeks. It seems like six years, doesn't it? And he's been going around with his cronies, tabbing (sic) his so-called "landslide" and "blowout" win. But he won the popular vote by 1.5 percent, one of the smallest ever, he won the general election by less than fifty percent. So what kind of mandate is this really?

Now, there's so much wrong with that opening remark, so much ignorance aggressively on display here, that it's difficult to know where to begin. Fortunately, Stephen A. Smith took care of that.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: It is a mandate, and I'm going to explain why.

Now I don't mind the question, but let me be very clear. I'm no supporter of Trump. I'm a supporter of truth and facts. And here's the facts. The man won every swing state. He increased in terms of his vote, his voter turnout, in his favor, from the standpoint of blacks, Latinos and young voters. He increased his numbers in that regard from 2020. 89 percent of the counties shifted to the right. That's a mandate.

We can sit up here and play around all we want to. In 2020, Trump didn't win the popular vote. He didn't win the electoral college vote. As a matter of fact the Republicans have won the popular vote, if I remember correctly, since 2004. But they did this year. So 20 years after they last won a popular vote, they won the popular vote. They won the electoral college vote. The man won every swing state. And on top of it all, 89 percent of the counties shifted (inaudible.)

I don't understand how people can look at that and say "There's no mandate." There's a mandate.

Everything about that is factually correct, which may be what prompted Joy Behar to attempt to re-write the Oxford Dictionary:

JOY BEHAR: There's a different definition of a mandate.

What? Mr. Smith didn't give her the chance to enlighten us as to how "mandate" might be alternatively defined. Is there some other form of mandate other than winning every swing state, increasing the vote share in key demographics, winning more votes than any Republican candidate ever, and utterly destroying his opponent? Because that sure seems like a mandate to anyone with enough smarts to pound sand.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: The problem is, if you're the Democratic Party, and you lost 49.8 percent to 48.3 percent, if you're looking at that 1.5 percent, that's an excuse for you to say "What we did really wasn't that bad. We should continue to do that."

No. Don't continue to do that. Find a new strategy.

Yes, Democrats, pay Mr. Smith no mind. Continue doing what you've been doing. Listen to the harpies of "The View." It will be fine! These people, honestly, are at the Animal House "Remain calm - All is well!" phase.

Now, Stephen A. Smith gets a couple of things wrong; his insistence, for example, on looking at the "national popular vote" as though it means anything other than a statistical curiosity; that's not how we elect presidents. But what he does understand is that President Trump's winning the total overall vote count, while meaning nothing constitutionally, is nevertheless a publicity coup. It makes people like Joy Behar and constitutional (and in every other area) ignoramuses like her take a step back.

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It's nice to see someone parading an actual, factually correct analysis on "The View," the last place we would expect to see such a thing. And Stephen A. Smith may be a liberal - he admitted to voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 and later admitted that her catastrophic loss made him feel foolish - but in this case, in this venue, he told the truth.

Political disagreements aside, we have to give him some credit for that - although, sadly, the coven of ladies on "The View" won't learn anything from it.