The Trump administration announced plans this week to require tourists from 42 countries to submit five years of their social media for vetting before entering the U.S. and, on Friday morning, the hosts of “The View” had a single guess as to how it would be possible: AI.
To kick off the day’s Hot Topics, the ABC hosts worried about the impact the move would have on tourism, before Joy Behar immediately wondered who or what department Trump would even appoint to scan these social media accounts.
“I would think it has to be AI,” Farah Griffin said, as Sara Haines agreed. “There’s no way. The manpower — five years of my social media, you wouldn’t see that person for like, weeks on end, it would take so long to go through. It makes no sense.”
“Five seconds of my social media, and I’d be banned from entering this country for life,” host Ana Navarro joked.
But, speaking more seriously, Alyssa Farah Griffin warned that requiring this kind of vetting would be a “devastation” to the U.S. economy. When asked if Trump realizes that, Farah Griffin argued that “he of all people should” as a hotelier.
“I cannot express enough how big of an economic devastation this will be to the U.S. tourism industry,” she said. “You’re talking about the UK, some of our closest allies in this U.S. visa waiver program, who are coming in many times, multiple times throughout the year, and they’re already seeing backlogs at some of these embassies. They’re saying ‘Your appointment to get a visa is going to be delayed weeks and weeks.’ People are going to cancel trips. They’re not going to come.”
You can watch the full discussion from “The View” in the video above.
