Sunny Hostin Slams President Biden on ‘The View’ for Fist Bumping Saudi Prince: “You Don’t Normalize a Murderer”

By Greta Bjornson @greatbjornson
Published July 18, 2022, 12:14 p.m. ET

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Sunny Hostin ripped President Joe Biden on The View this morning, blasting him for a chummy photo op with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Biden was at the center of a heated discussion between the co-hosts today after he was snapped fist bumping MBS while visiting Saudi Arabia last week — and Hostin emerged as the president’s fiercest critic.

MBS has been accused of multiple human rights violations, including allegedly ordering the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered while visiting Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Turkey in 2018.

Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia comes after his predecessor, Donald Trump, visited the country during his term as president in 2017. Hostin said she “had a problem” when Trump traveled to Saudi Arabia, but doesn’t think Biden “get a pass just because he’s a democrat.”

She continued, “I think this is bad no matter how you look at it, and we shouldn’t be here saying, ‘Well Trump did it so it’s okay that Biden did it.’ It’s just not okay in my view. I understand he was there because of the oil prices, I understand that we should be taxing American oil companies that are gouging Americans, that’s really what we should be doing.

“But the bottom line is, this was an unforced error. The White House is saying it’s because of COVID that he was fist bumping,” she said, before questioning the COVID excuse. “Well, I don’t know, he was shaking hands with people in Israel, he was shaking hands with the Palestinian authority. He didn’t have a mask on, and he’s fist bumping this guy who is clearly a murderer.”

Hostin repeated, “This is a murderer,” referring to MBS. “You don’t normalize a murderer by this fist bump. It was the photo op that he wanted and we’ve normalized these relationships.”

When Joy Behar tried to push back, asking Hostin, “Is he really normalizing it?” Hostin stuck to her take, shooting Behar down.

“No, Joy. I think this is the rehabilitation that MBS wants. Joe Biden gave that to him,” she replied with finality.

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC. Watch the full conversation about Biden’s photo with MBS in the video above.