‘It Was Your Job’: Sunny Hostin Confronts Alyssa Farah Griffin For Ignoring ‘White Supremacist’ Proud Boys While in Trump White House
The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin revealed she wasn’t briefed about the far-right group the Proud Boys when she was working for former President Donald Trump.
Members of the Proud Boys stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In a debate before the 2020 election, Trump told the group to “stand back and stand by.”
“The lesson I learned with Trump is you have to take him seriously and literally with what he says. And he uses language intentionally to reach certain audiences. I remember watching that ‘Proud Boys stand back and stand by,’ and honestly I had never even heard of the Proud Boys,” she said on Friday’s The View. “But I was like ‘there was something weird about it’ and it was very clearly in retrospect after Jan. 6 was meant to tell them, you know, ‘you are my guys. Stand by.’”
Co-host Sunny Hostin went after Griffin for how she responded to that debate moment when she was his White House communications director.
“Did you not see that then? I think I remember reading when you were his press secretary, you didn’t think that he needed a clarification,” said Hostin.
“Honestly, I’ve talked about this before, I didn’t know what it meant,” said Griffin. “It wasn’t honestly until it came together and the Proud Boys started organizing and came out and violently protested…”
Hostin interrupted Griffin and said, “That’s so odd to me because I think if you hear someone telling a white supremacist group that is known for violence stand by…”
“But I didn’t even know who they were,” said Griffin while Hostin was talking.
“I think Black people need to know enemies of people of color,” said Hostin. “But when you have clearly a supremacist and, quite frankly, not to push too much on you, it was your job to know about that, right, as press secretary. But why would you not think that that’s crazy?”
Griffin explained that the Proud Boys never came up while she was being briefed.
A little bit of info there though because I would get national security, law enforcement briefings. I had a top secret security clearance, or … TSS CI security clearance.
I was briefed on a top of violent extremist groups, even ones that he was encouraging. Never once were the Proud Boys briefed to me and that to me exposes a gap in law enforcement. I had never heard that group before until he said it on air and I regret that I then said, like, ‘I think I said it’s much to do about nothing.’ It didn’t mean anything to me. And then seeing what happened on Jan. 6, and then seeing Proud Boys come up and say, ‘Oh yeah, I was there because he told me to be.’ Like, they’re admitting what we know. So when Trump comes out and says this, people have to believe him.
Watch above via ABC.
