On Monday’s episode of “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin stirred up controversy by asserting that earthquakes and the impending eclipse are both a result of the planet’s changing climate, which prompted her fellow co-hosts to correct her.
The exchange began when Alyssa Farrah Griffin mentioned a fact about former President Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course.
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin blamed Monday’s solar eclipse, Friday’s earthquake and the expected cicada breeding season on “climate change.”
“All those things together would maybe lead one to believe that either climate change exists or something is really going on,” she said Monday.
A 4.8-magnitude earthquake was felt across New York and New Jersey on Friday; on Monday, the highly anticipated solar eclipse swept across the continental U.S.
Hostin also claimed that her studio makeup artist “put on her coat” and “ran down the hallway” during the earthquake, saying, “Jesus is coming” and “The rapture is here.”
But co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg pushed back on her theory.
“Except earthquakes are not at the mercy of climate change. It’s underground. It can’t,” Behar said.
“How about the warming of the planet?” she responded.
“No, it happens,” Goldberg said. “And the eclipse, they’ve known about the eclipse coming because eclipses happen, and they actually can say when these things are going to happen.”
Hostin pointed out how it was the first time in 100 years that two different cicada broods would emerge for their mating seasons at the same time, but Goldberg promptly shut her down, arguing it happens every 17 years.
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin joked that Trump caused the quake: “I read online that the earthquake epicenter was actually at Bedminster in New Jersey … Fun fact. So, it originated with Trump.”
Others have caught flak for similar takes, including Green Party member and U.S. Senate candidate for New Jersey Christina Amira Khalil, who went viral after she posted a similar theory to social media claiming the earthquake that rocked New York and New Jersey on Friday was caused by climate change.
“I experienced my first earthquake in NJ. We never get earthquakes,” she wrote. “The climate crisis is real. The weirdest experience ever.”
The post was widely mocked and received an X “Community Note” fact check providing more context.
Khalil eventually deleted the post and switched her account to “protected” mode so that the public couldn’t view her posts any longer.
