ABC’s The View was to facts and history as water was to oil; they don’t mix. So, it made sense that they would celebrate Black History Month on Tuesday by promoting the long-discredited work of far-left journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and The 1619 Project. Staunchly racist Sunny Hostin praised the work of her friend and downplayed the legitimate criticisms from actual historians (including minorities and people on the left).
“Today, we honor investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones who continues to redefine our national conversations on race,” Hostin announced.
She went on to laud the fictitious writer for her “career covering race, class, education, and equity,” while writing off the criticism:
Born in Waterloo, Iowa her award-winning career covering race, class, education, and equity all started with a letter to the editor of her local paper at just 11 years old. Joins Jones [sic] The New York Times in 2015 and publish her groundbreaking investigative piece four years later, The 1619 Project. The collection of essays and art backdated the founding of the United States from 1776 to 1619, the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia.
Although it was met with backlash, the project went on to become a best-selling book, a Hulu docu-series and podcast, and inspired her children's book Born on the Water.
Hostin’s scripted screed actually perpetuated one of the lies from Jones’s project, one even edited by The New York Times: that America was “founded” in 1619.
As The Federalist wrote in the fall of 2020, “At some point in the last year, while defending their project from the disputes of respected historians and issuing corrections for other central claims, the paper of record quietly omitted the controversial ‘founding’ claim from its description.” Jones herself also tried to defend the edit by calling it just a “rhetorical argument” she was supposedly making.
Obfuscated by Hostin’s use of the word “backlash” was also The Times’ correction of Jones’s lie that the American Revolution being fought to preserve slavery (a lie Hostin had floated on the ABC News program herself). “This re-dating of the founding of the United States only makes sense if we accept an ahistorical claim that slavery was a major reason colonists split with England. That is exactly why Hannah-Jones made the claim,” The Federalist wrote.
In 2022, legitimate historian Wilfred Reilly called out the 1619 Project’s omission of key context from its revisionist history:
The 1619 essays almost universally ignore or minimize four critical pieces of context that any unbiased school curriculum would include. These are the truly global prevalence of slavery and similar barbaric practices until quite recently; the detrimental economic impact of the Peculiar Institution on the South and on the American national economy; the nuanced but deeply patriotic perspectives on the United States expressed by the black and white leaders of the victorious anti-slavery movement that existed alongside slavery; and the reality that much of American history in fact had nothing to do with this particular issue.
Given the true context, it makes sense that Hostin would promote Jones and The 1619 Project, because they’re all highly anti-American and only see the world through a warped racist lens.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
ABC’s The View
February 25, 2025
11:26:36 a.m. EasternSUNNY HOSTIN: Today, we honor investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones who continues to redefine our national conversations on race.
Born in Waterloo, Iowa her award-winning career covering race, class, education, and equity all started with a letter to the editor of her local paper at just 11 years old. Joins Jones [sic] The New York Times in 2015 and publish her groundbreaking investigative piece four years later, The 1619 Project. The collection of essays and art backdated the founding of the United States from 1776 to 1619, the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia.
Although it was met with backlash, the project went on to become a best-selling book, a Hulu docu-series and podcast, and inspired her children's book Born on the Water.
Jones's work led her to give a speech before the U.N. in 2022 and has earned her an Emmy and Pulitzer Prize.
Today, she's empowering the next generation of truth seekers through her Ida B. Wells society for Investigative Reporting while serving as the knight chair at Howard University. And back in her hometown in Iowa, Jones established the 1619 Freedom School, a free community-based after-school literacy program where she continues to share the message that education is the key to freedom.