Sunny Hostin Urges Spotify to “Police” Joe Rogan’s Podcast on ‘The View’

The View landed on a tricky hot topic as the first of the day during today’s taping: Joe Rogan. In light of Neil Young’s decision to scrub Spotify of his collection, the panel debated whether or not Spotify is responsible for any of Rogan’s guests, statements, or other claims made on his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.” While most of the co-hosts were fairly laissez-faire about the matter, Sunny Hostin was not ready to accept the platform Rogan has earned via Spotify. And, in a bizarre turn of events, as the argument got more heated, Joy Behar actually defended Fox News to prove her point — hell has truly frozen over!

“It’s not Spotify’s job,” Behar began. “We have the First Amendment in this country, we have to stick with it. You can’t just pick and choose when you want to use the First Amendment.”

“I disagree with that,” Hostin interjected.

“Okay, well, I’m going to tell you what I think,” Behar continued. “I agree that Joe Rogan is a horror. A horror! But the way to counter that speech is more speech. The way to counter is with boycotts.”

Even though Behar was firm in her belief that the First Amendment should protect Rogan and his podcast, Sara Haines later rebutted, saying that because Spotify is a private business, they don’t have to allow everyone to publish whatever they want. Still, Hostin had a different argument entirely.

“Don’t you want good corporate citizens, Joy?” Hostin rebutted. “People always came down on Facebook and they came down on Twitter, they said they’re disseminating all this dangerous information. Don’t they have some accountability for it? It is their platform, it is their business. I want a good corporate citizen. I want a citizen that has a policy.”

Hostin clarified her stance on what exactly should happen with Rogan’s podcast: “I’m not saying Joe Rogan should be removed from Spotify,” she said. “He’s got 11 million listeners. He’s got a $100 million contract as of 2020. But I do think, as the podcast platform, you have to have some sort of guidelines. How about a disclaimer on a podcast that says: ‘This is misinformation.’ How about removing some of the podcast that disseminates this information?”

Behar agreed — somewhat — with Hostin’s new idea for Rogan’s podcast. The panelist argued that if Spotify were to remove Rogan, what’s to stop people from eliminating Fox TV from cable as well?

“You can take Fox TV off your cable,” Behar said. And in a bizarre twist, Behar actually came to the defense of Fox News: “But you can’t just cancel the show. We have the First Amendment.”

Lisa Ling, stepping in as guest host for the week, entered the discussion with a new idea for Spotify. Instead of pulling Rogan off — because, let’s be realistic, they would never remove his uber-popular show, Ling argued — why not flush him out with more scientific evidence?

“Give people a platform to counter what he’s spewing, or the guests that he’s having on,” she suggested. “There was a letter that 270 physicians and scientists wrote to Spotify saying, ‘You’ve got to clear up this misinformation. You have to do something to mitigate that.'”

Still, Hostin was fixated on finding a way to erase Rogan’s podcast, rather than sound him out with other facts. Bringing in her own experience, Hostin suggested that Rogan be held to some sort of standard the way the co-hosts are at The View.

“We are held to the ABC News standard because ABC News is our platform,” Hostin said. “It just doesn’t make sense. If you think about some of the things Joe Rogan said, he called a trans-woman, a mixed martial artist, a man. In terms of Islamophobia, he had the Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes. He used his appearance to argue that Muslims are too inbred for the U.S. to accept as immigrants. In terms of racism, in 2013, he said that he was walking into a Black neighborhood and felt like he was walking into Africa and watching Planet of the Apes.”

Hostin concluded: “I understand he has a right to say that. But this platform needs to police his content.”

Watch the full segment in the clip above. The View airs weekdays on ABC at 11/10c.

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