'The View' forced to issue on-air correction after 'porn' smear on House Speaker Mike Johnson
On Friday's "The View," co-host Sunny Hostin issued a correction after she mischaracterized a Rolling Stone report on House Speaker Mike Johnson using an app to discourage his son from viewing pornography.
During "The View" on Friday, co-host Sunny Hostin issued an on-air correction after she mischaracterized a report earlier in the show about new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., using an app to discourage his son from viewing pornography.
While talking about Republican lawmakers’ "hypocrisy" with her co-hosts, Hostin brought up a recent Rolling Stone article about Johnson and his 17-year-old son’s efforts to avoid internet porn as evidence they were not following the Bible’s teachings on sexuality.
After co-host Sarah Haines made a point about churches leading people to exclude LGTBQ people and that being contrary to a biblical message of love, Hostin cited the Johnson family example.
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"The View" co-host Sunny Hostin retracted a smear she made about House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and pornography earlier in the episode of the ABC talk show. (Screenshot/ABC)
She asked, "Well, isn’t a hypocrisy, Sarah, that Mike Johnson you just quoted, the Speaker of The House, isn’t he the same one that had a deal with his son so that they monitor each other’s porn use?"
She continued, "I don’t know which chapter and verse of the Bible says that that’s okay, but I haven’t read it yet. So in terms of relying on faith, that is the height of hypocrisy – hiding on your faith to cherry-pick issues."
Hostin’s remark seemed to suggest that Johnson and his son were both aware of each other using porn, while the Speaker endorses biblical morality in the political sphere.
However, later in the episode, Hostin acknowledged that she mischaracterized the Rolling Stone report, which noted that Johnson was an "accountability partner" for his son in regard to porn, as an effort to discourage him from watching it.
Hostin attempted to slam Johnson by misrepresenting a Rolling Stone piece about the lawmaker's stance on pornography. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The outlet still characterized Johnson’s approach as "creepy." However, it revealed that the Speaker’s motive was to discourage porn use.
The Rolling Stone quoted Johnson, who previously explained the situation that he and his son use an app that "sends a report to your accountability partner."
He said "My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell you, my son has got a clean slate."
Hostin told the audience, "I wanted to explain something a little further. I wanted to clarify that the monitoring app that Representative Johnson and his son use is to prevent porn viewing. They are accountability partners for each other in terms of porn."
Ironically, during a discussion with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Friday's show about the proliferation of misinformation among America's youth on social media platform TikTok, Hostin argued that "parents, unfortunately, we have to be, those shepherds as well. We have to watch what our children are watching, we have to monitor it."
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Fox News Digital's Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.
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