Author Coleman Hughes accused The View co-host Sunny Hostin of having “no idea what she was talking about” in their recent tense interview in which Hostin asked Hughes about being “co-opted” by the right.
Hughes joined The View last month to discuss his book, The End of Race Politics. He argued for a colorblind approach to politics, something Hostin pushed back on the hardest. Hostin asked Hughes about possibly being a “pawn of the right” and accused him of calling himself a conservative, something both he and co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin immediately shot down.
“I don’t think there’s any evidence I’ve been co-opted by anyone and I think that that’s an ad hominem tactic that people use to not address really the important conversations we’re having here,” Hughes said at the time. “I think it’s better and it would be better for everyone if we stuck to the topics rather than make it about me without any evidence that I’ve been co-opted.”
Hughes spoke with journalist Matt Taibbi about the on-air confrontation and said he was still confused about Hostin saying he’d referred to himself as a conservative.
“I know [Hostin] said that I identified as a conservative, which was surprising to me because unless I blacked out, I don’t remember that. She was very confident about it. I almost gaslighted myself. I thought, ‘Did I forget something I said on a podcast?'” Hughes said.
He added, “It turns out she was just, almost everything she said — she had no idea what she was talking about.”
The author and CNN analyst said he was so shocked by the accusations that he didn’t hear the word “charlatan” thrown out until he watched the video later. He said he was much surprised by the notion that he’d been “co-opted by the right.”
“It’s not precise. I don’t know what it means — maybe I’ve got the Koch brothers moving me like a puppet, pumping money into my bank account in some way,” he said. “And that has compromised my judgment, or rather really my honesty, it’s compromised my intellectual honesty in some way.”
Hughes did receive some applause from the audience during his appearance and he argued there may be more liberals who agree with him than Hostin and other critics think.
“My sense is that there were people in the audience of The View, which is a liberal audience, who agreed with me,” he said. “And not just a few people. If that’s a signal of anything — I don’t know that I changed minds, or if it’s more that the show uncovered that there are a lot of liberals that agree with what I’m saying.”
Read Taibbi’s entire interview with Hughes here.
Watch the Hostin and Hughes debate above via ABC.
