The View host Sunny Hostin accused President Trump’s impeachment defense team of racism by bringing up the New York Times’s 1619 Project.
“That was just a dog whistle to, you know, a racist dog whistle, quite frankly, to the base,” the host claimed Tuesday after the show played a clip of the defense team mentioning the project. Co-host Joy Behar said she thought the defense team brought it up as a “smokescreen” to ignore the charges against Trump.
During the trial, Trump’s team called the project an “ahistorical sleight of hand” and said it had been criticized by historical scholars. The reference was made as the team criticized the House impeachment managers’ take on the impeachment of former President Andrew Johnson in 1868.
The New York Times unveiled the project back in August, and its goal was to “reframe” American history around the start of slavery. The paper planned to release a series of articles as a part of the project, which so far include essays such as “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation” and “The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.”
The project’s bold claims have caused some to criticize it as being historically inaccurate, calling it an attempt to advance divisive politics.
Last week, Hostin affirmed her support for identity politics while her fellow co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Meghan McCain disagreed.
