Hostin has previously criticized the Trump administration and Musk’s controversial role in it.

In February 2025, posts surfaced on Facebook alleging that “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin had called Elon Musk a “b*****d” live on air, without providing any evidence to corroborate the claim.

Snopes readers searched the site for the claim and wrote in asking whether it was true. The assertion was false, however.
Advertisement:

The posts surfaced in the weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump retook office. Musk, the richest man in the world, is the apparent head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, despite conflicting messaging from the White House, and he has been a vocal spokesperson for the controversial administration.

The false rumor appeared to have originated with unreliable “news” sites linked in the descriptions of the Facebook posts sharing the rumors. The apparent source article, which appeared in nearly identical form on the different sites, was poorly written — one version that appeared on multiple sites swapped the genders of Hostin and Musk and referred to the two as “Suply Hostin” and “Eloisa Musk.”
Advertisement:

That version of the article also featured several basic grammatical errors that even generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT do not make.

There was no evidence to support the assertion that Hostin had called Musk a “b*****d” on air. If she had, reputable entertainment media outlets would have interviewed parties involved, while Hostin or “The View” would almost certainly have issued a public statement about the supposed incident. A Google search returned no evidence that had happened.

Despite the fact that the video’s underlying claim was false, the posts could seem believable because of Hostin’s previous criticism of the Trump administration and Musk’s controversial role in it. Because of that background, combined with the emotionally charged language Hostin supposedly used, posts like this can generate hundreds or thousands of comments from social media users. Some comments indicated that people interpreted the videos to be real news.

This was not the first misleading rumor related to The View that captured social media users’ attention. For example, we previously debunked the false claim that Melania Trump had sued Hostin for $900 million.