The View used the Independence Day weekend not to celebrate the nations founding ideals, but to launch yet another confused attack on the American flag and, by extension, on the country itself.
As the United States marked the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, communities across the nation held unabashedly patriotic celebrations with large-scale fireworks displays and countless homes proudly flying the Stars and Stripes. Yet even this unifying symbol of national pride became a target on ABCs daytime talk show, where co-host Sonny Hostin declared that the American flag makes her feel unsafe and then pivoted into a familiar monologue on race in America, according to Western Journal.
Hostin, acknowledging that she had raised the point before, told viewers, There are times when I walk into a community and I see American flags all over the community and I suddenly feel unsafe because theres a section of this country that has coopted the American flag and they equate being an American or an American flag with white supremacy and that should never be the symbol of white supremacy, but they have weaponized it. In her telling, the presence of the national flag in a neighborhood is less a sign of patriotism than a coded warning that white supremacy is nearby and that, as a black woman, she is somehow in imminent danger.
This framing turns a unifying emblem into a tool of division and fear, and it does so in a way that does not withstand even basic scrutiny. While no reasonable person wants white supremacists as neighbors, the notion that white Americans broadly or the flag itself represent a primary physical threat to black women is not supported by the data.
Even research from sources that liberals typically trust undercuts Hostins narrative. According to the Violence Policy Center, an anti-gun organization whose work progressives often cite, black women who are victims of violence are far more likely to be harmed by someone close to them a spouse, an intimate acquaintance, or a family member than by a stranger, which in practice overwhelmingly means offenders who are black themselves.
Drawing on 2020 statistics, the Violence Policy Center reported, Of Black victims who knew their offenders, 56 percent (259 out of 464) were wives, common-law wives, ex-wives, or girlfriends of the offenders. The same analysis highlighted an even more striking figure: Ninety-one percent (584 out of 641) of the homicides of Black females were intra-racial.
Intra-racial, of course, means the victim and offender are of the same race. Put plainly, black women are roughly nine times more likely to be killed by a black offender than by a white one, a reality that directly contradicts the idea that white neighbors flying the American flag are the central danger to black womens safety.
This raises an obvious question: will Hostin return to the program to acknowledge these facts and revise her claims, perhaps admitting that the real threat to black women is not white America but overwhelmingly black America? The answer is almost certainly no, because The View has long functioned less as a forum for serious, fact-based discussion and more as a platform for grievance, outrage, and ideological performance.
The shows history underscores this pattern. Viewers may recall a remark by co-host Joy Behar in March 2025 when she nearly said on-air that she hoped President Donald Trump would buy a rocket from then-Department of Government Efficiency Chairman Elon Musk, board it, and that it would explode, a comment so reckless that co-host Whoopi Goldberg had to cut her off and rush to a commercial break, likely sparing Behar a visit from the Secret Service.
Such episodes suggest that ABC is not particularly interested in elevating the level of public discourse. The The View panelists increasingly resemble a group of moms, wine drunk, sitting around rambling about nonsense, rather than informed commentators offering reasoned perspectives on national issues.
From a conservative standpoint, the tragedy is that a major broadcast network devotes a prime daytime slot to a program that routinely disparages American symbols, distorts statistics, and inflames racial tensions instead of encouraging unity, personal responsibility, and honest debate. ABC could arguably serve its audience better by canceling the show altogether and replacing it with dead air and a blank screen, which at least would not mislead viewers about the meaning of the American flag or the realities of crime in America.
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