“The View” host Sunny Hostin disputed the claim on Tuesday that she had compared white Republican women to “roaches” if they voted for GOP candidates.
Hostin and her cohosts on the ABC midday talk show spent much of Tuesday’s broadcast discussing the midterm elections — which were already underway all across the country — and Hostin tried to walk back her comments from a few days earlier.
WATCH:
After a commercial break, weak Alyssa buckles to racist Sunny and claims she "misquoted" her.
FACT CHECK FALSE: Sunny did call white women roaches, and she is a racist.
She then goes on to say that the rhetoric still needs to be brought down. pic.twitter.com/nYQNvjNOiA— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 8, 2022
Republican cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin began the segment with a warning, saying that she was concerned about the tone of the language many on the far left were using to talk about their political opposition — and Hostin quickly interrupted.
“This won’t be a popular opinion at the table, but I worry that some of the far left has become so negative in how they talk about the other party —” Griffin began.”
“Who are these far left people?” Hostin interrupted.
“Sunny —” Griffin tried to continue but Hostin continued talking over her.
“You can both-sides this,” she pushed back. “Because the far left — the far left — did not storm the Capitol.”
“Last week you called — last week you called white Republican women cockroaches,” Griffin said.
“Actually I didn’t,” Hostin pointed an accusatory finger at Griffin. “I used a —”
“You said they were acting like cockroaches —” Griffin continued.
“That was a metaphor,” Joy Behar protested.
The women began talking over each other to such a degree that Whoopi Goldberg scolded all of them, demanding that they “tone it down” so that people could understand what they were saying.
Hostin then repeated the analogy, saying that white suburban women voting Republican was “like roaches voting for Raid.”
Griffin again stuck on the tone of Hostin’s analogy, ignoring the larger point that, if the rest of the analogy held true, Hostin was essentially claiming that Republican Party was exterminating women.
Hostin continued to lecture Griffin, claiming that she had borrowed the analogy from actor John Leguizamo and saying that when she had used the same phrasing to talk about Latinos voting Republican, no one had said anything to her about it.
Griffin picked the conversation back up after a commercial break, repeating her concern that people on both sides were taking the personal attacks too far.