The View's Sunny Hostin Hates 'Privilege'... Except For Her Own

Authored by Andrea Widberg via AmericanThinker.com,

No one hates “privilege” more than Sunny Hostin.

The slightly black co-host of The View, who earns $2 million annually and lives with her orthopedic surgeon husband in a 12,000-square-foot New York City apartment, repeatedly castigates those—usually white—who exercise their “privilege.”

However, when it came to throwing her weight around with the cops to protect her son from allegedly illegal conduct, the whole idea of “privilege” vanished from Hostin’s mind.

Hostin, a former federal prosecutor with a pretty face, landed herself a gig on The View, a show that is aggressively woke. In that context, Hostin often complains about privilege—all kinds of privilege that imply that talent and hard work are meaningless. Here are some notable examples:

In April 2019, when he was running for the Democrat nomination, Pete Buttigieg made obeisance to the race and sex hustlers by reflecting on his “white privilege or male privilege.” Hostin was thrilled that Buttigieg had this empathetic insight into his privilege.

In May 2024, while the shrews...er, hostesses were discussing Caitlin Clark, Hostin stated, “I do think that there is a thing called pretty privilege. There is a thing called White privilege. There is a thing called tall privilege, and we have to acknowledge that.

Most tellingly, though, for purposes of this essay, in September 2019, when actress Felicity Huffman was trying to get a more lenient sentence for her role in a college admissions scandal, Hostin was outraged that someone prominent, wealthy, and generally in a better (presumably whiter) situation than other people, would dare ask for leniency: “She had wealth, privilege and a platform, and she didn’t use it appropriately.”

I couldn’t help thinking of these (and other) attacks on privilege when I read about Hostin throwing around her privileged weight as co-host of The View when she tried to stop police from arresting her son who had allegedly been caught walking along the railroad tracks in chi-chi Westchester County last month:

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin tried to talk cops out of issuing her Ivy League-educated son a trespassing citation — telling them he “has no criminal record” and repeatedly citing her legal background, according to newly released police bodycam footage.

The TV personality and former federal prosecutor was on the phone with her 24-year-old son, Gabriel Hostin, when he was stopped by police along Metro-North Railroad tracks in Westchester County last month.

“My name is Sunny Hostin and I’m one of the co-hosts of ‘The View’ and I’m a former federal prosecutor,” the 57-year-old mom can be heard saying to the responding officers in the bodycam footage obtained Friday by The Post.

You and I both know that she talked about her role on The View as a subtle threat to the police: I’m powerful, I know people, and I can use my show to destroy you is the privileged subtext of that statement.

And then more privilege: “That’s my son. He’s a Harvard graduate, he doesn’t have a criminal record.” In other words, Harvard grads, among the most privileged people in America, shouldn’t be arrested. That was such an important point to Hostin that, when she raced down to meet the cops personally, she reiterated his privilege: “He’s a Harvard grad...” And then, to assure the arresting cop that her blackish, Puerto-Rican-ish, white-ish son was a good person, she added that he “teaches 4th grade geometry to South Bronx kids.”

Thankfully, the cops were unmoved by the claimed privilege and the virtue signaling. They noted that Gabriel Hostin could not have missed clearly posted “no trespassing” signs, and that they had no option but to detain him. As it was, they limited themselves to issuing a trespass violation, rather than arresting him.

Here’s the full bodycam video:

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Sunny Hostin and son seen on police body cam in trespassing incident. https://t.co/JAMUKRJD7p pic.twitter.com/m25cxe3B1E

— TMZ (@TMZ) July 17, 2026

Those were very nice cops. If they hadn’t been so polite, they could have told Sunny and Gabriel that being a Harvard graduate doesn’t mean you’re not too dumb to live if you think running on a railroad track is a good idea. But apparently being a mixed-race Harvard grad who’s the son of a famous mother makes you think your privilege leaves you immune to the laws of physics. Those immutable laws say that, when a train hits a human, the human loses.

I fully understand Hostin’s impulse to go full Mama Bear when she felt her son was under attack. That’s a very human emotion. But her approach—which basically boiled down to a politely expressed version of “do you know who I am and do you know who my son is?”—is still a stinking bit of leftist hypocrisy when you consider Hostin’s long history of identifying and attacking any type of so-called “privilege,” especially those attached to wealth and prestige.