Sunny Hostin of The View hurled a not-so-subtle accusation of racism at President Donald Trump for his administration’s fledgling plan to give a $5,000 ‘baby bonus’ to every American mother after they give birth.
The policy, which he told reporters Tuesday ‘sounds like a good idea,’ would act as an incentive to boost the birth rate in the United States, which has been declining since 2007.
In 2024, the US finally reversed the years-long trend with a one percent increase in births when compared to 2023, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Talking about Trump’s baby bonus plan, Hostin referenced the CDC data and examined which racial groups had the most babies last year.
‘That [one percent] increase was with Hispanic mothers and Asian mothers. Aha! So, they don’t seem to be concerned about that increase. They seem to be more concerned about a decrease in other populations,’ Hostin said.
Hispanic women gave birth to nearly 4 percent more children, while the number of Asian babies increased by more than 5 percent, according to the CDC.
Joy Behar urged Hostin to say what she was implying, that Trump is only concerned that the birth rates among white people are declining. In 2024, there was a modest 0.37 percent yearly decrease in the number white babies that were born.
Hostin was reluctant to go all the way with her point, but Alyssa Farah Griffin, the resident conservative on the panel pressed her liberal co-hosts, asking them when Trump had ever said his baby subsidy would only be for white families.
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Sunny Hostin, a co-host on The View, suggested that President Donald Trump’s plan to give $5,000 to new mothers to boost fertility rates could be seen as racist. She based that on CDC data that revealed Hispanic and Asian mother gave birth to more babies in 2024, whereas white mothers did not
‘Have they said that anywhere? I feel like, just to be fair,’ said Griffin, who was briefly Trump’s presidential assistant in 2020. ‘Have they said that this is to target only white families?’
Hostin then backed off, saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t say that. You have to read the stats.’
Behar, more willing to cast aspersions, jumped in: ‘It’s in between the lines. They’re not going to say it.’
Trump critics have long accused him of being racist, even before he became a political figure in 2015.
In 1989, Trump took out full page newspaper ads calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty after the Central Park Five – a group of black and Latino teenagers – were set to go on trial for beating and raping a white woman in Central Park.
The five men were later exonerated in 2002 after another man admitted to the crime. The Central Park Five sued Trump for defamation and this month, a federal judge refused Trump’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.
Critics have also zeroed in on Trump calling African nations ‘s**thole countries’ in 2018.
Others have noted that the Proud Boys, described as a white supremacist group by some, was firmly in the corner of Trump, with its members making up the largest number of arrests at the January 6 Capital Riot in 2021.
And one of Trump’s first official acts as president this year, an executive order to trying to eliminate birthright citizenship, was assailed as racist by the American Civil Liberties Union.
‘Every attack on birthright citizenship, from the 19th century until now, has been grounded in racism,’ the ACLU said in an open letter criticizing the executive order.
Trump’s decree to end automatic citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants has been halted by three district courts, with the Supreme Court due to hear arguments on the issue in May.
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Three members of the exonerated Central Park Five stand on stage with Reverend Al Sharpton and New York City Council member Yusef Salaam at the 2024 Democratic National Convention
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Pictured: Trump signs his executive order restricting birthright citizenship on January 20, 2025, the day he was inaugurated for his second, non-consecutive term
Earlier in the segment on The View, Whoopi Goldberg also made her feelings known on Trump’s $5,000 baby bonus proposal.
‘I am incredibly insulted by this because clearly they don’t how women’s bodies work and they don’t know what it costs to raise a child or just have a child,’ Goldberg said. ‘And $5,000? I don’t know what $5,000 is supposed to do.’
The average cost associated with pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum care was $18,865 in 2022, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.
If a mother is enrolled in a large group healthcare plan with her employer, however, out-of-pocket costs average out to $2,854.
As early as March 2023, Trump has been supportive of financially compensating women who give birth.
‘We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom. How does that sound? That sounds pretty good. I want a baby boom,’ he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference that year.
The White House has been hearing a plethora of proposals on measures to reverse declining birthrates in recent days.
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Trump, who referred to himself as the ‘father of IVF’ on the campaign trial in October 2024, signed an executive order that seeks to make in-vitro fertilization more accessible in February
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This graphic shows the steadily declining birth rate in the United States since 2007. In 2024, there was a less than one percent increase in the birth rate, reversing a 16-year trend
One is the $5,000 baby bonus. Another policy would reserve 30 percent of scholarships for the prestigious Fulbright fellowship for applicants who are married or have children.
A third proposal calls for government funded programs to educate women on their menstrual cycles so they can better understand when they are ovulating and able to conceive.
It’s not yet clear which of these three is going to win out in the end, or if the administration seeks to pursue some or all these policies in some form.
Trump, who referred to himself as the ‘father of IVF’ on the campaign trial in October 2024, signed an executive order that seeks to make in-vitro fertilization more accessible in February.
The order tasks the assistant to the President for Domestic Policy with looking into recommendations on how to make IVF ‘drastically more affordable.’
His press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the order will ‘aggressively’ reduce out-of-pocket costs for the procedure that costs generally costs between $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle, according to the text of the order.
