Speaking Monday on Behind the Table, the podcast hosted by The View executive producer Brian Teta, Sunny Hostin defended comments she originally made in 2021 about feeling “unsafe” in neighborhoods full of American flags that resurfaced following this year’s America 250 celebrations.
“I stand by that,” Hostin said.
Rather than retracting or clarifying her remarks, Hostin claimed that her feelings are common in the black community and stem from personal experiences involving racist symbols and extremist groups.
Drawing a Comparison
Hostin recounted a visit to a beach house in North Carolina, where she said she encountered a Confederate flag flying near a group of men gathered around a pickup truck.
“I’m in the South,” she recalled. “I’ve got these two kids with me. I look the way that I look.”
Hostin said she hurried back to the house because the flag made her nervous, explaining that while her white friends had grown accustomed to seeing it, it affected her very differently.
Few Americans would dispute why a Confederate flag might make someone uncomfortable. The Confederate battle flag has long been associated with the Confederacy, segregation, and slavery.
But many struggled with her equivocating the national flag with that of a historic symbol of secession.
“They’ve Weaponized the American Flag”
Last week on The View, Hostin revisited remarks she first made four years ago.
“There are times when I walk into a community, and I see American flags all over the community and I suddenly feel unsafe,” she said.
On Monday’s podcast, she clarified that it isn’t a single American flag that bothers her but neighborhoods displaying what she described as “flags everywhere.”
According to Hostin, the issue isn’t the Stars and Stripes itself but what she believes it has come to represent for some Americans.
“Unfortunately, at this point in our country, the American flag has been co-opted by the far right,” she said.
“To deny that is ridiculous to me,” she added.
Hostin also expressed support for what she described as efforts to “take the flag back.”
“I would be very happy to be part of a reclaim the American flag” movement, she said, arguing that it should once again symbolize “justice,” “freedom,” “equality,” and “the promise of this country.”
An Increasingly Divided Symbol
Hostin’s comments also reflect a broader cultural shift.
Over the past decade, many Americans have observed that the flag has become more closely associated with conservative politics than it once was.
At the same time, many progressives have become noticeably less likely to display the flag, leaving conservatives to dominate its public use.
Many argue that Hostin and those like her have politicized the flag themselves while complaining about the consequences of their own actions.
Patriotism Shouldn’t Be Partisan
If there is one point on which Hostin and many of her critics may actually agree, it’s that no political faction should have exclusive ownership over the American flag.
The Stars and Stripes predates every culture war currently dividing the country.
Treating neighborhoods filled with American flags as inherently threatening may say more about America’s growing political polarization than about the people displaying them.
In an era when even the nation’s most recognizable symbol has become politically contested, perhaps the greater concern isn’t that one side has “co-opted” the flag—but that so many Americans increasingly assume it belongs to only one side at all.
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