On Monday, ABC’s “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin tried to elevate the importance of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion to the extreme by claiming it was on par with World War II, the Holocaust, and slavery.
Hostin led into her preposterous claim by taking a shot at former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had stated while appearing on “The View” in October 2021 that “it’s time to move on” from focusing on the events on Jan. 6.
“You don’t move on, because Jan. 6 was an atrocity,” Hostin said.
“It was one of the worst moments in American history, and when you think about the worst moments in American history, you know, like World War II, things that happened, you know, like the Holocaust, chattel slavery. We need to never forget because past becomes prologue if you forget and erase,” she added.
Sunny Hostin calls January 6 an “atrocity” and “one of the worst moments in American history” comparable to the Holocaust and slavery. pic.twitter.com/JfoqwsosAX
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 6, 2025
Let’s take a step back and see just how crazy Hostin’s statement is.
Jan. 6 was a political protest involving thousands of people gathering outside, and some inside, the Capitol, a subset of which — 200 or so — engaged in some level of violence in the form of pushing, shoving, resisting arrest, or hitting a police officer with a flag pole or some other object in the worst cases.
“Insurrection”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 17, 2023
Should ABC cancel “The View”?
The only gun fired that day was at a pro-Trump protester, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer.
The Electoral College vote was delayed for some hours due to the protest, but it did take place at the Capitol early in the morning on Jan. 7, USA Today reported.
Certainly, it was a bad less than 24-hour period in American history, but now contrast that with World War II.
In that five-year war, over 418,000 Americans died, and an estimated 60 million perished worldwide.
And then there was the Holocaust, which made up about 6 million of those deaths, as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany sought to exterminate every Jew in Europe.
What about the notion that Jan. 6 is as important as the existence of slavery in U.S.?
The Europeans introduced the institution into the American colonies in the first years of their existence in the early 1600s.
When the U.S. declared its independence in 1776, slavery had a firm hold in the American colonies. Great Britain would not finally end slavery in its lands until 1834, over a half-century after the Revolutionary War.
The U.S. northern states began voting to abolish slavery during the Revolutionary War and by 1804 all had. Then the U.S. fought a Civil War in the 1860s during which over 620,000 Americans died, but the country emerged as one united country again, free from slavery.
So no Sunny, as scholars look back over the panoply of American history, Jan. 6 will be a footnote, while World War II and the abolishment of slavery will remain defining moments.
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