Sunny Hostin Delivers Harsh Warning that Elon Musk’s Twitter Purchase Will “Unleash the Trolls” on ‘The View’

Sunny Hostin says Elon Musk‘s claims of bringing free speech back to Twitter only apply to one group of users: “straight, white men.” The billionaire, who purchased the social media platform yesterday for $44 billion, was the first topic of discussion during this morning’s Hot Topics on The View, where Hostin claimed Twitter is about to change for the worse.

Musk has said he envisions Twitter as a “digital town square,” saying in a statement released after his acquisition, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

But Hostin warned on The View that the “free speech” Musk is championing won’t apply to every user: “Twitter can be a really horrible place, and I think people are excited because he is going to unleash the trolls. He is saying, ‘You get to say whatever you want. I’m going to take away the guardrails.'”

While some are celebrating Musk’s plans, Hostin said she thinks his ideas are “a bit scary,” especially to women using Twitter. Hostin then pulled in numbers reported from The Economist‘s Online Intelligence Unit, telling her co-hosts, “38% of women around the world have said that they have been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse on Twitter. Eighty-five percent of women have said that they have seen the abuse.”

Despite the buzzy news of Musk’s Twitter purchase, Hostin said only a sliver of adults across the globe even use Twitter. Shooting down Musk’s idea that his newly-purchased app is a “digital town square,” she mentioned a 2019 Pew Research Center study, which stated that “only 22% of adults are on Twitter in the world.”

She continued, “Twitter is not the real world. In fact, on Twitter it is predominantly straight, white men. So when Elon Musk says, ‘Wow, this is about free speech,’ it seems to me that it’s about free speech of straight, white men.”

Hostin said if that’s the case, she’ll “let ’em have it,” telling her co-hosts, “let them just go at it.” While Twitter enters its new “free speech” era, Hostin said she’ll be shutting out the noise: “I enjoy the block button,” she said.

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.