The View co-host Sunny Hostin caused utter confusion this week with conservatives when she baselessly claimed Republicans want to raise the voting age all the way up to 28.
Hostin made the accusation while discussing young voters and their impact on the midterm elections.
“When you look at the youth voter turnout in the 2022 midterms, they delivered key wins for the Democrats. Younger voters aged 18 to 29, which, by the way, now the Republicans want to raise the voting to age 28,” she said, going on to tout young voters’ support of the Democratic Party.
She also warned the Republican Party they need to “get with it” to survive.
“I think, my friend, you know, Cornell Belcher … he says there are really two electorates. One older and one younger fighting to take this country in very different directions,” Hostin said. “The Republican Party has to get with it. They are dying out, and they are being extremist.”
The problem here is no national Republican lawmaker is pushing to raise the voting age by a decade. Hostin did not cite any examples to back up her claim before the show cut to commercial break.
“Reminder: It’s only misinformation when it’s the stuff they don’t like. Refuse to play by their rules,” former View co-host Jedediah Bila tweeted in reaction to the clip of Hostin, which was flagged by Media Research Center.
“Hey @Alyssafarah, why don’t you push back on Sunny’s ridiculous lies???” MRC’s Nicholas Fondacaro tweeted.
Others like Ben Domenech ripped into Hostin for the erroneous claim. Domenech even called for Hostin’s firing.
Claiming falsely that Republicans want to elevate the voting age to 28 as @sunny just did is damaging to our democracy, the fairness of elections, the trust in our institutions, and more. She should be fired. It is heinous to allow her back on air after such an egregious lie.
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) November 14, 2022
The degree to which @sunny is an unrestrained psychopath who invents things out of nowhere and demonizes half the country is something @ABC and @Disney will have to deal with in the coming years. She deserves the same treatment as fellow ultra racist Tiffany Cross. https://t.co/pi8tlQX1QF
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) November 14, 2022
Hostin’s claim appears to be based on a recent tweet from pundit Peter Schiff, in which he offered a poll for users to vote in that asked whether the voting age should be raised to 28. Schiff, however, is not a lawmaker, nor has his tweet become a platform for the party. Among the 13,000-plus who voted in his poll though, over 68 percent supported raising the voting age.
What Hostin may not have expected with her generic claim is that it would be the first some were hearing of such a proposal, and a few actually supported it — albeit jokingly for many.
“I wish to hell it was the GOP’s position. How about if you stay on your parents’ insurance till age 26, you can’t vote until you’re off of it? I’d be all up in that,” filmmaker and outspoken conservative Nick Searcy tweeted.
“Not gonna lie, Sunny Hostin had a better pulse on what I want than any elected Republican in America,” Jesse Kelly wrote.
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