ABC The View host Sunny Hostin finally spoke on the baseless accusations that she paid her son’s way into Harvard. As reported in a January 10 Decider article, she denied having done anything financially to get her son admitted – specifically, she clarified that she never “bought a building” in exchange for his acceptance.
Hostin said, “Look, I’m from the Bronx projects. I don’t have money to buy buildings at Harvard, OK? So he earned that on his own, and yes, I would be upset if people took that away from him. But we taught him, we can open up a door for you, but you’ve gotta walk through, and you’ve gotta work hard, and you’ve gotta be there first and be there last, and work as hard as you can.” She explained that her son’s hard work got him into the esteemed university.
“Any parent is going to try to make sure that their children have a better life than they had,” Hostin said to her co-host. “I know I tried very hard so that my children had a better life, and I was very surprised when people said, ‘Oh, Gabriel got into Harvard because Sunny bought a building.’”
Whoopi Goldberg, 67, replied by talking about her experiences working in the acting industry. “I didn’t have a leg up,” Goldberg remarked. “And I got where I got ’cause I got it.”
Goldberg continued to offer insight into the discussion of children who have wealthy parents and that they could still be working hard behind closed doors. “Don’t assume that people didn’t work and bust their behind. ‘Cause their parents might have said to them, ‘I’m not gonna help you. You need to get this done on yourself,” Goldberg stated. “Ninety percent of the people I find are working their butts off because they just want to have a good life like their parents did.”