CNN bans conservative writer after ‘beeper’ comment to Muslim commentator

NEW YORK — CNN has banned conservative writer Ryan Girdusky from the network following a contentious on-air exchange in which he told panelist Mehdi Hasan that “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.”

“Did you just say I should die?” Hasan said.

He was responding to Girdusky’s apparent reference to September’s attacks where pagers and walkie-talkies used by hundreds of Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria exploded simultaneously, killing 39. The attack was widely believed to be carried out by Israel.

Hasan and Girdusky were on a panel on “News Night” Monday night, talking about Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, where speakers made a variety of racist comments and referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” The panel discussion devolved into back-and-forth bickering after Girdusky said to Hasan, a commentator and founder of the media company Zeteo, that “you’ve been called an anti-Semite more than anyone else at this table.”

Host Abby Phillip said that Girdusky’s beeper comment was “completely out of pocket” and he apologized. But after a commercial break, he was gone.

Philip apologized to Hasan and to viewers. She said Girdusky, author of the book “They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution,” had crossed a line.

CNN was having a heated discussion about the Trump rally, where the racist and other demeaning language was a sign of how tensions are coming to a boil with only a week to go until a highly contested and contentious Election Day that reflects the nation’s political and cultural fissures.

Despite that fragmentation, Phillip said that “we can have conversations about what is happening in this country without resorting to the lowest … kind of discourse.”

CNN, saying there is “zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air,” said that Girdusky would not be allowed back on the network.

Girdusky responded in a post on X: “You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi” but apparently can’t “if you make a joke. I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.