Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines Clash Over Whether Trump Supporters Are 'Selfish' on The View

Sunny Hostin came out swinging against Donald Trump supporters on Thursday's episode of "The View," as the panel addressed the extremely close race between POTUS and Joe Biden.

Joy Behar was the first to speak, saying the election so far has been "disheartening" for her since Trump's numbers were still so high. "We see half the country ignores the terrible things that he has done, for whatever reason," she said.

Hostin, too, then said she was "surprised" by the tight race "because of the botched job that this president did."

"For the past four years, this president has shown us that he is a misogynist, that he is homophobic, he is racist and that he mismanaged a coronavirus pandemic to the tune of over 250,000 American deaths," she continued. "Yet 50% of America saw all of that and looked the other way to their brothers and their sisters and said, 'I'm gonna vote for him anyway.' That is really disheartening."

"For me, that means that you are selfish," she added. "I'm not gonna say that 50% of Americans are racist and sexist and homophobic, but I will say that tells me they will look the other way to that kind of behavior, to the plight of their fellow Americans, if personally they feel they are doing okay and they will do better under that type of president and that, I think, is despicable. It is un-American."

Sara Haines, however, said she disagreed with Hostin.

While she too "felt a disheartening feeling" seeing all the red on the map, she said "voting is a selfish thing." She added, "we vote for what affects our day to day lives," before pointing to some Obama supporters who voted for Trump in 2016 "because they couldn't put food on the table" and thought Trump could help them economically.

"That's their choice. That's their vote and they're just as American as we are, they have a different viewpoint," she said. "That was the part that really shocked me on election night, is how different it was."

Hostin hit back though, telling Haines that, "The problem, Sara, is that our very democracy is founded on the notion of a collective spirit. We the people, for the people, by the people and unless you have that collective social contract, our democracy fails."

"So when you see 50% of the country just looking the other way at the plight of 50% or more of the country, at the plight of the LGBTQ community, at the plight of African Americans, at the plight of immigrants whose children are being torn from them at the border, at the plight of people that are losing their spouses, their children, their brothers, their sisters from a deadly virus because the President could not control it because he lied to us, when you see that and you still continue to vote for yourself, democracy fails," she concluded.

Whoopi Goldberg cut them off to give Ana Navarro a chance to speak, but after a commercial break Haines got a chance to continue her thought.

She clarified that while she votes for a woman's right to chose, LGBTQ rights and the environment, she acknowledged she has "the privilege of doing that" because she doesn't work "check to check to put food on the table."

She went on to say liberals "can't expect empathy if we don't give it" to conservatives in return. "People are raised in different places and they have different things at the top of their ballot they're voting for," she added. Though she made a point to say Sunny wasn't calling Trump supporters racist, others were making broad stroke generalizations like that which keep "people at opposite sides of the spectrum."

Hostin eventually got the spotlight again and agreed the conversation shouldn't be filled with "name calling," but said it had to be "honest."

"This election showed us what the true character of many Americans is. I'm not saying that if you voted for Trump that you are a racist, that you are a homophobe, that you are a sexist, that you are against transgender rights," she continued. "But I will say, if you voted for Trump, you then did look the other way at the fact is is not allowed our transgender brothers and sisters from serving in the military, that he has called people from African country, that those people are from shit hole countries, that he has slandered women, that he has done all of these terrible, terrible things. If you voted for him, then all of those things are okay with you because of your own personal circumstance."

Added Behar, "a lot of people in this country need to have a come to Jesus moment and look in the mirror and see what they did. She's right about a lot of it."

Watch the discussion above. To see what more celebrities had to say about the closeness of the race, click here.