Speaking during the broadcast of ABC’s “The View’s” “Behind the Table” podcast on Wednesday, March 12, co-host Sunny Hostin lost it over the news that Washington D.C. is removing its Black Lives Matter (BLM) street mural “a little personally,” saying that she had a personal connection to BLM and thus was emotionally wrecked by the news.
As background, D.C. decided to remove the BLM plaza’s mural, supposedly because of pressure from the anti-BLM Trump White House. Tacitly admitting as much, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser explained her decision to remove the mural by saying. “It’s fair to say the White House didn’t like it.”
In any case, Hostin, losing it over the matter, said that her friend had written a letter that supposedly started BLM as a movement. She said, “Of course, I take it a little personally because one of my closest friends is Alicia Garza, who wrote the letter that started the Black Lives Matter movement, and she is one of our thought leaders of our generation.” She added, And so, I’m saddened by it.” For reference, Alicia Garza is the activist who, in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in 2013, created the #blacklivesmatter hashtag that took off on social media.
Continuing, the distraught Hostin bemoaned the defenestration of BLM by arguing that it was the “second most important civil rights movement in American history,” meaning after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and thus that removing the BLM mural from the plaza represented the “continuation of the erasure of American history.”
She then had an utter temper tantrum over President Trump flexing his political muscle to get D.C. to obliterate the mural, as the mayor admitted was the case, declaring that his simply using his power as president was “extortion.” She snapped, “It was extortion, and you know, what was Mayor Bowser going to do with that?”
Continuing, she explained why it was “extortion,” citing the city’s reliance on federal funding to maintain its operations. She said, “The city can’t run, Washington D.C….The city cannot run without government funding, without federal government funding, it just cannot have representation. It cannot do anything.” Watch Hostin here:
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Conservatives online slammed Hostin for her remarks. Paul Syzpula, for example, said, “Sunny Hostin says she’s sad that the Black Lives Matter plaza is being erased. She then falsely claims that BLM is “the second most important civil rights movement in American history.” BLM burned down cities, took countless lives, and only caused divisiveness. Good riddance.”
Another poster noted how absurd her claim about BLM as a movement was, quote tweeting a clip of her temper tantrum about the mural’s destruction and noting, “Sunny Hostin says BLM was a more important civil rights movement than the abolitionist movement and the women’s suffrage movement.”
Still another, commenting on the ridiculousness of her “extortion” hand-wringing given what the BLM movement really represented, said, “Sonny Hostin thinks the act of extortion was the removal of a BLM branding in cities not the actual extortion that held the nation hostage to a violent radical Marxist color revolution.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video