Imagine being so cloistered and one-sided in your political thinking that you’re “creeped out” you agree with a legislator on the other si...
Imagine being so cloistered and one-sided in your political thinking that you’re “creeped out” you agree with a legislator on the other side of the aisle.
That’s the experience Sunny Hostin, co-host of “The View,” had when she found out she agreed with GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on a single issue. That’s right: one (1) issue. That’s all it took for her to feel icky.
Not that you needed more evidence that “The View” is a unique bubble of liberal thought that functions much like Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system — only it shoots down common sense instead of terrorist rockets.
In this case, Hostin’s heebie-jeebies were precipitated by the fact she and Cruz jointly hold the view that there shouldn’t be a no-fly list for unruly passengers, something that could bar an individual from flying for even a single incident.
Cruz was one of eight GOP senators who signed a letter to the Department of Justice in opposition to a proposal for such a list by Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian, arguing that “the majority of recent infractions on airplanes has been in relation to the mask mandate.”
“Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland,” the letter read.
“The [Transportation Security Administration] was created in the wake of 9/11 to protect Americans from future horrific attacks, not to regulate human behavior onboard flights.”
The senators added that the “existing ‘no-fly’ list for suspected terrorists is already controversial due its lack of transparency and its due process concerns.
“However, the TSA has rightly chosen not to create a consolidated ‘no-fly’ list for passengers convicted of non-terrorist, on-board disruptions,” they noted.
“If the airlines seek to have such a list created, they would be best served presenting that request before Congress rather than relying on a loose interpretation of a decades-old statute originally written to combat terrorism.”
During a segment on Wednesday’s edition of “The View,” Hostin said she agreed with this — and was “kind of creeped out” that she did, according to Fox News.
“I never thought there would be a day when I would kind of agree with Ted Cruz,” Hostin announced.
Her logic: A TSA no-fly list for a mask mandate that could end in March would put someone on the list for a rule that was about to expire and that it gave too much power to flight attendants.
However, coming to a logical conclusion made her feel a bit skeevy, apparently.
“I feel kind of creeped out by it,” she said about agreeing with the Texas Republican. “I feel very weird about this.”
Thankfully, most of the rest of the panel didn’t, with Whoopi Goldberg arguing it was time for the government to “become nannies” for unruly airline passengers.
Hostin went on to argue that if there was a no-fly list for unruly passengers, an individual’s time on it should be limited — and someone who got “a little drunk” on board shouldn’t be on it.
“Watch how much you drink,” Goldberg shot back.
Take it from Whoopi, who was apparently stone cold sober when she told “The View” watchers that the Holocaust wasn’t about race. Throw a little booze into that mix and that suspension would definitely have been longer than two weeks.
Now, it’s worth noting that both Cruz and Hostin reached the same conclusion from radically different viewpoints. While incidents on board commercial airliners have escalated exponentially since the pandemic began, particularly over masking, a no-fly list for unruly passengers as restrictions wind down is closing the barn door after the horse has been able to gallop several counties over.
Not only that, its enforcement would be in the hands of flight attendants who, in many incidents, have played a role themselves through confrontational behavior. Deputizing them would only make things worse.
Notice, however, that Hostin feels uncomfortable reaching the same conclusion eight GOP senators did. While Cruz is the most well-known of the group, I’m guessing she won’t be breaking bread with too many of the others: Sens. Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven of North Dakota, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, and Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida were also signatories to the letter.
If Sunny Hostin is freaked out by coming to the same conclusion those GOP senators did, perhaps Sunny Hostin’s problems with the Republicans don’t necessarily stem from what they believe but more a fear of being found cheering for the other side.
Just a theory, of course — one which won’t be entertained with any great seriousness by either Hostin or any other co-hosts of “The View,” who’ll all be too busy vigorously agreeing on how treacherous modern conservatism is by tomorrow.
No comments