Fondacaro's View: Hate And Lies

Nicholas Fondacaro gets paid by the Media Research Center to hate-watch "The View" -- and he delivers, falsely smearing co-host Sunny Hostin as "racist" and "anti-Semitic" even though his alleged evidence doesn't back it up.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 4/12/2024

Nicholas Fondacaro

For a while now, NewsBusters has been documenting and calling out the racism of Sunny Hostin, a co-host of ABC’s The View. But even we were shocked Thursday when she suggested white women were “roaches” if they voted Republican. And being the wealthy elitist that she is, Hostin suggested they “were voting against their own self-interest” and supposedly wanted to live in the dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Citing “the abortion issue,” Hostin recalled reading “a poll just yesterday that white Republican suburban women are now going to vote Republican.” “It’s almost like roaches voting for Raid,” she proclaimed.

This drew immediate applause from the radical liberal audience and pushback from self-proclaimed conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who called the comment “insulting to the voter.” Hostin responded by shouting about how “They’re voting against their own self-interest! Do they want to leave it in Gilead? Do they want to be in The Handmaid’s Tale?”

Hostin did not call white women “roaches” — she used a metaphor. Fondacaro has apparently never heard of metaphors, so he dishonestly decided to take Hostin out of context as an partisan excuse to treat her statement as literal.

Tim Graham tried to further things in a post a few days later:

In her Daily Mail column for Election Day, Meghan McCain responded directly to her old friend (and co-host of The View) Sunny Hostin, who characterized white women voting for Republicans to “roaches voting for Raid”– voting for their own demise. 

In fact, McCain wasn’t directly responding to Hostin at all — her column didn’t even reference Hostin by name, and  she followed Fondacaro in taking one word out of context (“we’ve heard women described as ‘roaches’ and ‘Nazis’ for valuing their best judgement over the orders of Democrats and the liberal media”). It seems McCain is just as shaky on metaphors as Fondacaro is.

This is fairly run-of-the-mill incompetence on the part of serial liar Fondacaro and the MRC. Despite it being completely wrong, in pretty much every hate-watching post Fondacaro has written about “The View” for weeks afterward, he has described Hostin as a “racist” and linked back to the above post as evidence.

That’s right — Fondacaro is smearing Hostin as a “racist” because he doesn’t understand metaphors.

Last year, though, Fondacaro got tired of ConWebWatch pointing out that his main evidence that Hostin is a "racist" involves his failure to understand how metaphors work. So he directed us to a tweet in which he claimed to list all the ways that Hostin is "racist." As one would imagine given Fondacaro's malicious interpretations, it's much more about whining that Hostin talked about race in a way right-wingers like Fondacaro disapprove than her actually being "racist." Let's go through his list, shall we?

Indeed, his first example is the "white women are like roaches" thing we've ridiculed him over. Again, Fondacaro did not dispute Hostin's argument -- he simply close to be deliberately obtuse (and throw out some right-wing clickbait) by dishonestly portraying an obvious metaphor as Hostin being "racist." More examples followed.

Example No. 2: "Says white women are subservient." Here's what Hostin actually said, which is just a variation on her earlier argument that white women vote against their best interests by supporting Republicans:

I think that women, white women in particular, want to protect the patriarchy here, because it's to their benefit. They want to make sure that their husbands do well. They want to make sure that their sons do well. They want to make sure that their children do well. And they want to make sure that they do well. Most of the women in some of these studies are married white women and they do fall in line with what their husbands are doing, what their husbands are voting.

[...]

I think with white female Republicans, you have a Republican Party that is taking away your health right to decide for yourself. You have all of these things that are against women.

Again, Fondacaro didn't attempt to dispute her argument, though he noted that co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin -- whom he dismissed as a "self-proclaimed conservative," an allusion to all the Heathering he and the rest of the MRC have done to her -- "pushed back" on it.

Example No. 3: "Says the problem with American gun owners is that they're white." In his hate-watching write-up, Fondacaro asserted that Hostin "spewed her toxic racism again when she suggested the problem with gun owners in America was that they had white skin and were 'radicalized' by Fox News, thus a danger to the country." What Hostin actually said was that of gun owners, "largely they're men and they're largely white men." In fact, statistics show that white men own guns in a greater proportion than men of other races. Fondacaro did respond that "during the pandemic there was a surge of minorities who became first-time gun buyers, including black and Asian Americans, and they oppose gun control. And they’ve been welcomed into the gun rights community." He didn't mention that one motivating factor may have been the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, driven in part by right-wingers like Fondacaro and Donald Trump branding COVID as a "China virus."

Example No. 4: "Say white people are still benefitting from slavery." Hostin did indeed say that "white people really benefitted the most and continue to do so today," adding that "it's so upsetting when people say, 'But I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't own slaves.' No, but you continue to reap the benefits of it!" Again, Fondacaro made no attempt to dispute the accuracy of Hostin's statement, choosing instead to maliciously smear her as a "racist" for saying it. In fact, as writer Andre Henry pointed out, there remains a massive asset gap between white America and black America, made possible in part by wealth generated by slavery.

Example No. 5: " Falsely claims Nikki Haley is using a fake name to seem white and calls her a racial 'chameleon.'" In fact, Hostin never claimed Haley used a "fake" name -- that's Fondacaro's word -- but she simply noted that Haley is not using her "real name," which can reasonably interpreted as not using her given first name (which is Nimarata; Nikki is her middle name), and that "if she leaned into being someone of color it would be different" for her in Republican politics. Fondacaro went on to play an attempted gotcha:

Haines stepped up and shot back: “Sunny! You go by a different name!”

That’s right! Sunny’s real name is Asunción Cummings Hostin. And according to her, she doesn’t use that name because Americans are too stupid to pronounce it correctly. “Because most Americans can't pronounce Asunción because of the under-education in our country,” she sneered.

This conversation didn’t sit well with Whoopi Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, and she put an end to it.

Fondacaro then touted how Haley responded by claiming that "It's racist of you to judge my name." He obviously doesn't see himself as a racist for judging Hostin's name -- after all, he has clearly exempted himself from the standards he uses to judge others.

Example No. 6: "Says white GOPers only vote for women and minorities to control them." Again, "control" is Fondacaro's word, not Hostin's. The context of the discussion was the twice-failed Georgia Senate campaign of Herschel Walker, whom the MRC enthusiastically supported despite the fact that he was a walking scandal factory; Hostin said that "these white guys" in the Republican party were "using him. I think he knew it and he looked relieved almost" when he lost, adding that Republicans "made that race about identity politics. They tried to find a black man because there was another black man running," Democrat Raphael Warnock. Yet again, Fondacaro made no effort to refute anything Hostin said, just play the "racism" card to shut down discussion.

Example No. 7: "Suggests black/Latino Republicans are race traitors." Fondacaro put words in Hostin's mouth again; at no point did she say the words "race traitors." What Hostin actually said is "I feel like that's an oxymoron, a black Republican," adding that "I don’t understand black Republicans and I don't understand Latino Republicans."

The fact that Fondacaro has to put words in Hostin's mouth to portray her as "racist" -- and to insist that merely bringing up the subject of race is a "racist" act -- shows what an utterly dishonest, amoral and cravenly partisan person he is. Then again, if he wasn't all those things, the MRC wouldn't be employing him.

'Anti-Semitic' smear

In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, Fondacaro took to smearing Hostin as "anti-Semitic." But as with his smear of Hostin as "racist" -- which is based on her merely talking about racism and his failure to understand how metaphors work -- this latest smear appears to be based mostly on Hostin merely talking about the war between Israel and Hamas. Fondacaro helpfully summarized his attacks in a Nov. 2 post:

Since the start of the current war between Israel and Hamas, NewsBusters has documented the festering antisemitism leaking from The View’s Sunny Hostin as she has blamed Israel for the October 7 terrorist attack against them, decried Israeli anger at Hamas as “terrifying,” pushed Hamas’s propaganda, and suggested it was Israel that was committing acts of “terror” and “war crimes.”

Let's take a closer look at those allegations.

For the first allegation, that Hostin "has blamed Israel for the October 7 terrorist attack," linked to his writeup of the Oct. 9 episode, in which she he quoted her saying nothing of the kind. Fondacaro quoted Hostin noting that "this was a highly coordinated and wide-scale attack by Hamas," then asking ABC reporter James Longman, "What do we know about the timing of this, and what was the impetus for this to happen now?" Longman responded by accurately pointing out that the current government in Israel is "the most right-wing government in this country's history" adding that there's "a sense perhaps that many Palestinians that any kind of political way out of this, is behind them because some of the right-wing elements of the government have been very incendiary in their rhetoric about Palestinians." Despite the fact that Hostin said absolutely nothing that blamed Israel, Fondacaro claimed otherwise: "It was predictable that Hostin would take that position since it bought into Hamas’s narrative that Palestinian land was being occupied by colonizers. She likely sympathizes with that stance since she’s chronically aggrieved and supposedly “oppressed” (as she put it), despite being a multimillionaire. She had even demanded 'reparations' from the United States."

His third example came from the Oct. 11 episode, in which he accused Hostin of "openly pushing Hamas terrorist propaganda about Israel carrying out collective punishment against Palestinians and how they should “look at some restraint here” after 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered." But the first thing Fondacaro quoted her saying was the fact that the residents of Gaza "have not had a democratic election since 2007 ... They did not vote in these people currently vote in Hamas" -- not exactly "Hamas terrorist propaganda." Since he couldn't dispute that fact, he then tried to falsely conflate Palestinians elsewhere with the residents of Gaza: "So, Sunny, answer this: If Palestinians didn’t support the actions of Hamas, then why were they out celebrating in the streets and parading around the bodies of their victims? Why were they so emboldened as to have pro-terrorist rallies across the globe, even here in America?"

Fondacaro then wrote that "Hostin followed that up by pushing Hamas propaganda about how Israel was supposedly violating international law and dishing out collective punishment against Palestinians. This caused the rest of the cast to revolt against her, calling out Hamas for using human shields and storing weapons in schools and noting the Israeli Defense Force warned civilians before striking targets." He didn't accuse "the rest of the cast" of pushing Israeli propaganda.

Fondacaro's final alleged piece of evidence came from his Oct. 13 episode writeup, which he began by complaining that Hostin said "Hamas has been designated a terror organization just like many other terror organizations have had this designation, like the Proud Boys here in the United States"; he made no effort to dispute the accuracy of her description. Then he raged:

Hostin followed up by using Hamas talking points suggesting Israeli military actions were “retaliation against innocent civilians collectively” which were acts of “terror” and “war crimes.” Continuing to draw false equivalencies, she grossly compared Israel to Russia despite the fact Israel did not start the war:

And again, those are not my words, those are the words of the law. And the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said, just last year when we were talking about Ukraine, she said Russia's attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity, and heating with winter coming, these are acts of pure terror, and we have to call it as such.

Hostin responded by doubling down on the anti-Israel smears, proclaiming, “They should really refrain from committing war crimes or terror because they're going to lose the goodwill that they have.”

In fact, civilians have died in Gaza at a higher rate than in other recent conflicts, with most of the civilians killed in Gaza due to Israeli bombing have been women and children. Further, nearly half of the bombs Israel has dropped in Gaza have been unguided, which causes a greater threat to civilians. No less than Amnesty International is discussing the possibility that Israel's apparent disregard for the lives of civilians in Gaza constitute a war crime.

Despite the fact that there is nothing anti-Semitic about questioning the tactics Israel is using in Gaza, Fondacaro screeched in the beginning of his post that "We can now add anti-Semite as an accurate descriptor for The View ’s racist co-host, Sunny Hostin." (and, no, Fondacaro still doesn't understand how metaphors work.) In the Nov. 2 post that contained his list, Fondacaro tried to mock Hostin for responding to being falsely smeared as anti-Semitic:

In a segment featuring MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch, Hostin began her comments by whining that she doesn’t like talking about the war because she gets called out for being an anti-Semite. Her defense? She had a Jewish family member:

And I've explained that even as a person of Jewish ancestry – my grandfather is Jewish – Which in my view, is someone who hates Jews. I would have to hate my family.

“However, there is a difference between an anti-Semite and being someone that speaks out against Israel's -- some of Israel's policies,” she argued.

But as noted above, she wasn’t just speaking out against Israeli policy, she was speaking out against them even being angry about the terrorist attack that killed 1,400, including babies, and blaming them for it.

Unsurprisingly, Fondacaro did not explain how that supposedly equates to anti-Semitism. He then noted that "Deutsch even explained it to Hostin in simple terms that it was in Israel was indeed trying to minimize casualties and noted that it was in their best interest to do so" -- but, of course, he wouldn't label Deutsch as repeating Israeli propaganda the way he smeared Hostin for spreading "Hamas propaganda."

Year-end meltdown

Fondacaro and the MRC love to attack “The View” in general, but they particularly go after conservative-leaning co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro for not being far-right enough. ConWebWatch has documented the MRC’s Heathering of Farah Griffin, and the attack continued in Tim Graham’s Dec. 22 podcast, under the headline “Ana and Alyssa Don’t Bring Their ‘A Game’ to ‘The View'”:

As 2023 winds down, it’s time to review the best (or the worst) of “The View.” NB Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro discusses how Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin are alleged to represent a Republican viewpoint, but most of the time, they are just as liberal as the others, and demand the Republicans surrender on social issues like abortion.

These women are nothing like Meghan McCain, who seemed like she would be a liberal Republican when she began. But she strongly dissented from the others on many issues (despite her disdain for Donald Trump), and liberal guests had to be wary of what questions she might bring. On a recent show, Navarro compared her to Hunter Biden in making money off her family name...as if there are no differences?

This was followed by a Dec. 25 year-end piece by Fondacaro further attacking Farah Griffin and Navarro for not mindlessly spouting right-wing talking points like he does:

2023 was the first full year since ABC expanded the cast of The View to six co-hosts by cramming both former Trump White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin and former Republican strategist/lobbyist Ana Navarro into the “conservative” seat at the table. But despite doubling the number of supposedly right-leaning voices in their discussions, the two ladies have proven to be everything but strong conservative counterpoints to the other liberal ladies.

Whether it’s Navarro’s rabid anti-Republican bent and refusal to defend longtime conservative policy proposals or Farah Griffin’s spineless capitulation to the likes of staunchly racist and anti-Semitic co-host Sunny Hostin, both have proven themselves to be faux-conservatives.

Fondacaro’s complaints center around Farah Griffin and Navarro rejecting anti-abortion extremism and pro-gun absolutism and actually wanting to see the evidence before trying to impeach President Biden.

But Fondacaro was far from done -- that was the first of a whopping six year-end posts he dedicated to attacking “The View,” spewing his hate in each post. Next up was a Dec. 26 post:

ABC’s The View is not known for rational and measured conversations, so for this retrospective of The View’s antics in 2023, you’re advised to get multiple rolls of tin foil! Throughout the year, the liberal ladies have floated all sorts of harebrained, truly bonkers, and rather laughable accusations and theories about everything from Republican ninjas planting drugs to presidential candidates using body doubles.

And what makes their insane accusations even worse is the fact that The View is under the ABC News umbrella.

Fondacaro launched another attack the next day:

While most of the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View are up there in age (a fact they’re lash out at you for noticing), that doesn’t mean they’re not limber enough to tie themselves up into back-breaking contortions to help defend Democrats and push their policies.

Reality and sense were casualties as The View did their best to write off President Biden’s advanced age and mental slips ahead of an election year, downplay Hunter Biden’s crimes, and obfuscate the failure of liberal policies.

We don’t recall Fondacaro or anyone else at the MRC mock the back-breaking contortions regularly seen on Fox News to defend Republican policies. And in all three of these posts, he again smeared Hostin as “staunchly racist and anti-Semitic” despite having no legitimate evidence to back it up.

The hate-filled Fondacaro unironically lashed out at “The View” hosts for alleged “hateful moments” in a Dec. 28 post:

If you find yourself on the same side as the cast members of ABC’s The View, they will bend over backwards to defend you (as NewsBusters’ 2023 retrospective showed). But if you find yourself opposing them, they will launch some of the most racist, bigoted, and hateful attacks on television against you. They will even support your death. And as tensions in America ratcheted up in 2023, so did their naked hatred.

Their contempt for Republicans, pro-lifers, and white people flared on air often. So it was difficult to narrow things down.

Fondacaro yet again smeared Hostin as “staunchly racist and anti-Semitic,” further claiming that she showed “racism against white people” by accurately pointing out that white people “continue to reap the benefits” of slavery. Fondacaro offered no evidence whatsoever that Hostin is incorrect.

He also trotted out the “anti-Semitic” smear in claiming that “Anti-Semitic Hostin Defends Calls for Jewish Genocide on College Campuses.” In fact, according to his writeup of the Dec. 7 show from which he lifted his smear, all she did is point out that offensive speech can be protected free speech — you know, the very same argument the MRC uses in dishonestly branding any attempt to counter lies and misinformation online as “censorship.” At no point did Hostin “defend calls for Jewish genocide” as Fondacaro claimed — another piece of evidence for the defamation lawsuit Hostin is surely assembling against Fondacaro.

Fondacaro had another hateful list to serve up in a Dec. 29 post:

They may work for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) but that doesn’t mean the liberal ladies of The View show or have much love for America. Throughout the year, they’ve been slinging mud and badmouthing the country they call home, and it has allowed them to rake in millions of dollars while doing it.

And despite most of the cast being very wealthy multimillionaires who can go off and live anywhere in the world – and who claim America is worse than China – they never seem to want to do that. But they’re more than willing to sit around and whine about free speech, decry solid border protection, and reject fair judicial systems for their political opponents.

Of course, whining about free speech and fair judicial systems for their political opponents are things that the MRC does on a regular basis, but they would never claim that they “hate America.”

Fondacaro’s year-end meltdown concluded with a Jan. 1 post:

Despite being under the ABC News umbrella, the liberal ladies of The View left facts and truth out in the rain. Throughout 2023, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, the cast was busy cooking up outlandish lies about Republicans at all levels of government. And in most instances the record went uncorrected and cast members went unpunished by their network executives.

They accused Republicans of everything from cheating to win elections to rewriting history to literally killing kids (while they supported abortion), even cheered on other’s lies about the right. And as NewsBusters’ retrospective on the useless “conservatives” proved, there wasn’t much pushback on the lies. In fact, sometimes they’d happily join in spreading falsehoods and misinformation.

Fondacaro’s hypocrisy here is almost painful, given how his employer gave a pass to the lies about election fraud Fox News fed its viewers as exposed in the Dominion lawsuit, which Fox News had to pay $787 million to settle. If Fondacaro can’t be bothered to call out Fox News’ documented lies, he has no moral standard to criticize anyone else.

Oh, and Fondacaro falsely smeared Hostin as “staunchly racist and anti-Semitic” in those last two posts as well. Just more evidence for Hostin’s eventual defamation suit against him.