Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin Taunt Sunny Hostin for Going After Nikki Haley’s Nickname on ‘The View’: “You Go By a Different Name!”

The tables turned on Sunny Hostin during today’s episode of The View when she got into it with Alyssa Farah Griffin, leaving Sara Haines, who is typically on the quiet side of disagreements, to surprisingly come to the Republican co-host’s defense.

During the first Hot Topics segment, when Griffin said she would like to see someone like Nikki Haley run for president, Hostin slammed the former Republican governor of South Carolina for being a “chameleon” and asked what her real name is. Haley, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India, goes by her middle name, Nikki, as opposed to her birth name, Nimrata.

Griffin pointed out that “a lot of people don’t go by their actual real names” and when the ladies came back for their second segment, she continued to defend the politician.

“Nikki Haley has gone by Nikki since she was a child. It’s documented in high school,” Griffin noted. “I wouldn’t be shocked that if somebody, an Indian woman growing up in South Carolina at that time, she actually did to avoid prejudice. So I just want to be careful about critiquing her for going by the name she’s always gone by.”

Hostin, who was seemingly accusing Haley of white-washing her name, said, “There’s some of us that can be chameleons and decide not to embrace our ethnicity so we can pass.”

Meanwhile, an annoyed Griffin fired back, “Sunny, I don’t think that’s fair,” before Haines jumped in reminding Hostin, whose full first name is actually Asunción, that she goes by a different name as well.

“That’s because most Americans can’t pronounce Asunción because of the under-education in our country,” Hostin said, to which Griffin added, “Nimrata is hard to say too, I don’t blame her.”

Getting in one final word before Whoopi Goldberg shifted to commercial, Haines said,  “Sometimes I would say what Alyssa’s saying, is that people gravitate towards names for different reasons.”

While Nikki is the politician’s middle name, she told her followers that it’s also a Punjabi word for “little one.”

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