‘The View’: Sunny Hostin Agrees With Whoopi Goldberg’s Theory About Elon Musk as ‘Shadow President’

Amanda Bell February 27, 2025, 11:41 am

Comments

Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin on The View — ABC

After Elon Musk became the awkward centerpiece of yet another Donald Trump White House meeting — this time, that of the administration’s cabinet — The View cohost Sunny Hostin is finally ready to buy into Whoopi Goldberg‘s theory that he’s the one really running things.

Goldberg has long promoted her theory that Musk is more powerful than almost everyone else, although she usually said he was the “real vice president” instead of J.D. Vance. And now Hostin is on board with it, as she explained during Thursday’s (February 27) episode.

“I think if anyone was still in doubt where the power lies in Trump’s new administration, the Cabinet meeting made it clear that it wasn’t in the actual Cabinet. The power dynamic is that we, perhaps, as you [Whoopi] have been saying, have a shadow president. That’s what it appeared like to me,” she said. “Trump asked him to speak first. I don’t think that’s normal. There was minimal input from cabinet secretaries… What I got was that the government is saying that Elon Musk doesn’t actually run DOGE, that someone else runs DOGE, but that person wasn’t at the meeting, and the government has also said that he is a special advisor to the president. I think the bottom line is he is now, without question, Trump’s most powerful advisor.”

For her part, Goldberg feigned shock at Hostin’s statement in agreement with her and had her own say on the matter as well, adding, “I get that everybody’s very happy he’s doing what he said he was going to do, but he’s actually not. Because if you go through and you say, ‘Here’s where we’re bloated, here’s where we’re cutting, this is what we need to do’ [it’s fine]. But you can’t come in a week later and fire everybody when you haven’t done the homework.”

'The View': Alyssa Farah Griffin Has a Theory About Trump & Musk's Relationship

Joy Behar also had some very harsh words about both Trump and Musk after watching that meeting: “Trump is happy right now with this situation because he only ran to stay out of jail… He didn’t want the responsibility of the job. He’s not really bright enough to handle the job,” she said. “He can take a nap while the guy was not born in this country, who was born under apartheid in South Africa, so has that mentality going on, he was pro-apartheid… This is just perfectly wonderful for Trump. He can have a nap and let this foreigner, foreign agent, an enemy of the United States, do his job.”

The View, Weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC