Co-host Sunny Hostin told the audience of “The View” Thursday that “Republicans are the ones that are defunding the police” after Democrats embraced it across the country.
During a panel discussion on the ABC talk show, the hosts debated what the reason was for the rise in crime across the U.S. Co-host Joy Behar noted President Joe Biden was traveling to New York City to meet with Democratic Mayor Eric Adams to discuss crime and gun control legislation. Thousands of officers took to the streets Friday to honor slain NYPD Officer Jason Rivera.
Hostin argued that New York City has an incredibly large budget for law enforcement.
“So, it’s not about funding; it’s not about the fact that police don’t have enough funding,” Hostin shared. “But what I do think that’s interesting is that the conversation about a rise in crime — about a rise in gun crime — just never seems to include the unfettered access to guns in this country.”
“That is because Republicans don’t find it politically expedient,” she added. “It just seems to me that, you know, with the argument that gun ownership equals freedom, but stopping and frisking black and brown folks at disproportionate levels always seems to be okay, and the over policing of those communities always seems to be okay.”
“So, we need the get down to the root problem,” Hostin continued, “which is the fact that Republicans are the ones that are defunding the police. They refuse to pass legislation to help the police.”
Hostin said the Biden administration passed “something like $350 billion” in police funding and said “no Republican voted for it.”
Behar then interjected that there are “400 million guns are in the United States, we only have 330 million people here,” and claimed the vast majority of those guns are owned by civilians.
“The police will get killed by those illegal guns,” Hostin added, and said Republicans “don’t want to talk about root causes. All they want to talk about is, the Democratic, you know, problem with gun crime. They are the real problem in my view.”
Co-host Sara Haines jumped in and said, regardless of political party, “people are dying at higher rates than we’ve seen,” and pointed out the major American cities are witnessing huge spikes in homicides.
Behar suggested the crime wave could be related to the pandemic.
Haines said it could be due to a number of factors, including a decline in law enforcement recruiting and police morale.
Democrats have recently tried to distance themselves from “defund the police” rhetoric after the country suffered record-breaking crime waves in 2021.
*story by The Daily Caller
