Sunny Hostin, one of the most stridently anti-MAGA voices on ABCs The View, recently declared that she was embarrassed at how America is now seen across the globe, claimed that U.
S. allies are giving the United States a one-star rating as a country, and dismissed our republic as a failed experiment in self-governance.
Her sweeping denunciation raises an obvious question: if the United States is such a global disgrace, why have millions of migrants, from our founding to the present day, willingly endured danger, poverty, and separation from family for the chance to live here. As reported by Western Journal, Hostins rhetoric about how nations across the globe supposedly view America is not only impossible for her to verify in any serious way, it also flies in the face of the most basic facts about human behavior and migration.
Historically, the pattern is unmistakable: people vote with their feet, and they have overwhelmingly chosen the United States over the alternatives. With the single exception of the Great Depression, immigration to this country has consistently far exceeded emigration, a reality that flatly contradicts Hostins glass-half-empty narrative of national embarrassment.
It does not require an advanced degree in international relations to understand why those incoming multitudes have come. They have sought greater freedom, economic opportunity, and political stability than they could find in the supposedly less embarrassing nations they left behind, and they have done so in numbers that expose the hollowness of elite media scorn.
Even if one were to imagine, for the sake of argument, that Americas conduct on the world stage were purely self-serving, Hostin might still struggle to justify her sweeping condemnation. Yet the record shows something very different: her attacks are uninformed and display an astonishing lack of appreciation for who we are as a people and as a nation.
In 2024 alone, the United States obligated $86 billion in foreign assistance across 213 countries and regions, a staggering sum by any measure. That figure encompassed development aid, global health initiatives, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance, reflecting a sustained commitment to alleviating suffering far beyond our borders.
In absolute dollars, the United States is the worlds largest foreign aid donor and is often the single largest and fastest contributor to disaster response, global hunger relief, and emergency medical aid. While some smaller developed nations may devote a higher percentage of their GDP to foreign assistance, the reality is that the U.S. military undeniably the single greatest protector of freedom throughout the world bears costs that more than offset those proportional differences.
Moreover, this allegedly embarrassing nation has not only defended freedom in peacetime but has repeatedly sacrificed blood and treasure in war without demanding territory as payment. Since 1900, American policy has shifted decisively away from annexing conquered lands and toward postwar reconstruction, as seen after both World Wars and the Korean conflict.
That posture held firm even at the cost of well over half a million American lives, a moral choice that stands in stark contrast to the imperial ambitions of many past great powers. The United States has used its strength not to expand its borders but to give shattered nations a chance to rebuild and govern themselves.
Critics like Hostin might argue that foreign aid and military sacrifice mean little if Americans themselves are suffering more than citizens of other advanced democracies. Yet the data show that, in terms of material well-being and access to basic services, Americans enjoy one of the highest standards of living on the planet.
Access to electricity, internet connectivity, education, and sanitation is widespread, and the quality of those services is generally high compared with global norms. According to the World Bank, the United States boasts a higher per capita gross disposable household income than any other nation, underscoring the economic strength that undergirds our way of life.
There is, however, a paradox that critics often seize upon: despite these advantages, average life expectancy in the United States is nearly four years lower than in economically comparable countries. This gap persists even though America spends nearly twice as much on healthcare as its peer nations, a statistic frequently weaponized by those eager to indict the entire system.
Yet the evidence indicates that the problem lies far less with the country itself than with a cluster of self-inflicted lifestyle choices and cultural pathologies. The United States suffers from relatively high rates of chronic disease, obesity, illicit drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, accidents, and homicides, all of which drag down life expectancy.
No other developed nation comes close to America in substance abuse deaths, which are four times higher than in economically comparable states. Even more alarming, U.S. opioid deaths alone account for nearly a full year of our life expectancy deficit compared with other advanced countries, while the American homicide rate is up to 10 times greater than the average of our developed peers.
These grim statistics make it tragically clear why Americans, on average, die nearly four years earlier than citizens of similar nations, but they do not support Hostins sweeping indictment of the American experiment itself. Instead, they point to cultural and moral crises many exacerbated by progressive policies that undermine family, faith, and personal responsibility rather than to any inherent failure of the republic.
Against this backdrop, another mystery emerges: how could Hostin, who was raised by teenage parents of modest means, rise to earn millions of dollars in a country she now derides as a glass-half-empty embarrassment. Her own life story is a testament to the opportunity and upward mobility that remain possible in the United States, even as she uses her platform to disparage the very system that enabled her success.
Certainly, Hostins professional achievements and her law degree merit acknowledgment, as hard work and talent should. However, to describe our incredibly generous republic, which crushed fascism, weakened communism, defanged ISIS, achieved countless medical breakthroughs, and went to the moon, as an embarrassment should shame only one person, and that is Hostin herself.
Perhaps such self-reflection is too much to expect from a media personality who once suggested that Trumps bad juju at Madison Square Garden caused the New York Knicks to lose Game 3 of the NBA championship series. When political commentary descends into superstition and reflexive contempt for America, it says far more about the commentator than about the country she condemns.
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