Sunny Hostin, a co-host of The View, asserted during Monday's show that Kyle Rittenhouse "wouldn't be alive now" if he was black.
After fellow co-host Joy Behar asked whether or not the defendant would be free now had he been black, Hostin responded by saying, "No, he wouldn't be alive now."
Hostin added that she did not believe Rittenhouse's shootings were a clear case of self-defense.
IS THE NATION DIVIDED OVER RITTENHOUSE VERDICT? The co-hosts and guest co-host @KSoltisAnderson react to Kyle Rittenhouse being acquitted on all charges and him saying the case has "nothing to do with race" in his first interview since the trial. https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/znz5MOVdNq
— The View (@TheView) November 22, 2021
"I think that when you certainly go to a place with an AR-15-style weapon, and you shoot someone and you’re running away from that shooting and people are running after you because they think you’re an active shooter, I don’t know that that is a cut and dry self-defense case as to second person and the third person," Hostin said.
"This is sort of a bellwether of where we are as a country," Hostin continued, "When you have people now, I think, that will be afraid to exercise their constitutional right to protest. Because now this country, really, has said, because so many people are very supportive of this young man, Kyle Rittenhouse, as this hero of the Second Amendment, as this hero of self-defense, and I think people now will think, well, someone can legally come to a protest and under the cover of law, kill me."
Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges Friday after being taken to court for fatally shooting two men, and injuring a third during a riot in Kenosha last year that was in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.