Sunny Hostin shares her most outrageous Trump conspiracy theory yet, as Smithsonian boss is dragged over wokeness

Sunny Hostin has bizarrely suggested that the Trump administration is targeting the Smithsonian Institution in an effort to avoid paying reparations to the descendants of slaves.

Hostin made the comment on Wednesday as she and other panelists on The View discussed the hearings on Capitol Hill this week following a damning White House report on the National Museum of American History.

The report accused the museum's leadership of making the taxpayer-funded institution move toward 'ideological capture' and 'extreme political activism.'

But Hostin said on Wednesday she thinks 'the real reason behind this is about financial repair to the descendants of the enslaved Africans.'

When co-host Whoopi Goldberg then asked her to clarify what she meant, Hostin replied, 'reparations.'

'I think this reflects a broad effort by the Trump administration to reshape the way the nation's history is told, so this country does not have to pay black people for the forced labor and the unpaid labor that built this country,' she explained. 'I really think that this is what this is about.'

'Even after 250 years, there's so much repair that needs to be done when it comes to aggrieved groups in this country, but especially African Americans,' the liberal pundit continued.

'Let's face it, when you have truth and reconciliation commissions - and you've had them when it comes to interned Japanese Americans, you've had them when it comes to the Holocaust, you've had them when it comes to Native Americans - it has not happened, [these] truth and reconciliation commissions when it comes to slavery. And that is because they're trying to bury the truth part.

'You cannot have true reconciliation, and then you cannot have true financial repair unless you have the truth. And they're trying to erase that truth.' 

Hostin, who is also facing backlash for using her position to try to get her son out of trouble with the police, went on to note that the UN General Assembly voted in March to declare the transatlantic slave trade 'the greatest crime against humanity.'

The US, Israel and Argentina voted against the resolution, while 123 countries voted in favor and representatives from 52 countries abstained. 

Ambassador Dan Negrea, the US representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, explained ahead of the vote that the US 'does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.'

'And so what this is about is money,' Hostin said, citing the ambassador's remarks.

'This is not about anything else. It's about this country trying to avoid paying African Americans our due.'

But many on social media noted that Hostin's own ancestors were slaveowners.

'Hostin's family owned slaves and tried to out run the abolition of slavery, but she has not made an effort to find and repay their descendants,' Nicholas Fondacaro, associate editor for The Media Research Center wrote.

'It seems like Sunny Hostin needs to pay reparations since her family had slaves,' another X user posted. 'Jokes on her.'

Hostin had appeared on the PBS documentary show Finding Your Roots in 2024, when host Henry Louis Gates Jr revealed that one of her ancestors on her mother's side was likely involved in the slave trade in colonial Spain.

Her third great-grandfather also 'owned at least one human being,' Gates Jr said.

Hostin, whose mother is Puerto Rican and father is black, said the revelation left her in 'a little bit of shock.'

'I just always thought of myself as half Puerto Rican. I didn't think my family was originally from Spain and slaveholders,' the liberal co-host said at the time.

She then acknowledged: 'I guess it's a fact of life that this is how some people made their living, on the backs of others.'

The co-host's most recent quips about reparations came as Director Dr Anthea Hartig was grilled by the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, an arm of the Department of Government Efficiency.

She has been facing backlash since the White House Domestic Policy Council released its July 4 report – which mentions her by name more than 200 times and called out her comment to students about seeing history as a 'prime tool of social justice.'

The council did not specify what actions the White House may take to hold Hartig accountable, but it notes that Trump's executive order last year directs Vice President JD Vance to work with Congress' Office of Management and Budget to 'prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race or programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.'

At the hearing on Tuesday, Representative Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican and chairman of the subcommittee, echoed many of the White House's assertions in his opening remarks. 

'I feel like [the Smithsonian's] become infected by a woke ideology that seeped into public displays, educational materials and planning documents,' he began, according to NPR.

'The American story is the birth and growth of a great nation founded on powerful ideals and which we aim to fully achieve. But in the museum's current telling, history is just an ongoing power struggle between oppressors and the oppressed.' 

Burchett then focused his ire on two recent exhibitions: 'Entertainment Nation,' which explores the history of entertainment and 'Girlhood (It's complicated),' which discussed gender identity, the New York Times reports. 

'You have pictures of bondage, you have some overtly sexual things up there, you have transgendered folks,' he said. 'In another exhibit, a six-year-old girl asked why she doesn't have male genitalia. Do you really think that content is appropriate for children? I mean, do you think little girls have penises?'

Hartig then replied that the 'Girlhood' exhibit 'was not designed for children' and had a label informing parents about some of the topics.

 She then went on to rebuke much of the White House's report.

'We unwaveringly attest that it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum,' Hartig said, though she acknowledged 'there is always room for improvement.'

'When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don't mean erasing it. We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story.'

She also argued that the museum is not unpatriotic, as the report suggested, citing  the prominent displays of artifacts including the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and President Abraham Lincoln's top hat.

'We honor the Declaration, the Revolution, the Constitution, our national symbols,' Hartig asserted. 'And we tell the truth about the times that the country fell short of its founding ideals.

'Telling our story fully is a form of respect for the American people and [a] commitment to constantly being in pursuit of a more perfect union.' 

Hartig was supported at the hearing by Yale Professor David Blight, who called the White House report 'nothing less than a declaration of political war' that 'breathed the rhetoric of Cold War triumphalism.'

'We do not write woke history, whatever that is,' he said of historians, 'but we do try to awaken citizens.' 

But the panel also heard from Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has been critical of the Smithsonian and criticized its secretary, Lonnie G Bunch III.

'Teaching lessons about American wickedness is now the mission of the Smithsonian,' he said, arguing that 'museum leaders have commandeered the world's largest museum complex and admit that they intend to use it as a tool of societal transformation.

'That is not why Americans entrusted these institutions to them,' Gonzalez claimed.

He then turned his attention to Bunch, who he said 'put the Smithsonian's reputation at serious risk' as Hartig 'endorsed all of it, pledging to "work to reframe the traditional celebratory narrative of US history" to force a "national reckoning."

'National reckoning from a history museum?' Gonzalez asked, rhetorically. 'This erasure of American culture must end now.' 

Following the hearing, several Democrats on the subcommittee who are black seemed to agree with Hostin, saying they found what they viewed as the White House's effort to de-emphasize the effects of slavery to be offensive.

'Welcome to the Republicans' White Pride Rally disguised as a congressional hearing,' Representative Jasmine Crockett, of Texas, quipped.

'It might be uncomfortable for some people on this committee to hear about the true history of America and I hate that for them, but facts are facts.' 

Fellow Democrat Melanie Stansbury, of New Mexico, also used the hearing to introduce her Smithsonian Integrity and Historical Independence Act to prohibit federal officials from 'trying to interfere in the independent institutions of this country and the historic interpretation of our nation's history.'

House Democrats also released a 16-page rebuttal to the White House report on Tuesday, accusing the Trump administration of trying to undermine the trustworthiness of museums and scholars – which they argued is part of a larger 'effort to control and contort the historical record.'

Citing recent public opinion polls, the Democrats wrote: 'Museums regularly rank among the three most trusted institutions in the country, trailing only friends and family.

'The White House asks the public to believe the institutions Americans trust most are the ones peddling radical ideology on the word of President Donald Trump.'

Meanwhile, Republicans on the subcommittee sought to focus on the extent to which they said the museum was dedicated to presenting a vision of America that focused more on its faults than its achievements.

'Your museum has minimized or contextualized the founders primarily through slavery and exclusion, while elevating narratives of conquest, systemic injustice and resistance,' said Representative Lauren Boebert, of Colorado. 

'Is there any version of the American founding you consider worthy of uncomplicated celebration, or is the entire project irredeemably tainted by your view?'

Hartig addressed the question in her closing on Tuesday, when she invited members of the subcommittee to visit the museum.

'Walk the building with me. Stand in awe in front of the Star Spangled Banner,' she said. 'I believe what you will find, madams and sirs, is not an institution that has forgotten its country, but one that loves it enough to tell the full sweep of history, our triumphs and our struggles.'