CNN pulled a panelist off of NewsNight with Abby Phillip this evening after he made a swipe at Mehdi Hasan, suggesting that he was aligned with terrorists.
Ryan James Girdusky, a writer and commentator, was having an argument with Hasan over the rhetoric used at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday evening at Madison Square Garden.
Hasan said that “if you don’t want to be called Nazis, stop doing, stop saying,” but he was interrupted by Girdusky. He noted that Hasan was called an “anti-Semite more than anyone at this table.”
“By you,” Hasan said.
Watch on Deadline
Then, Girdusky denied that he had called him that.
“I am in support of the Palestinians, so I am used to it,” Hasan said.
“I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” Girdusky replied. That was a reference to a Hamas terrorist.
Then their argument got heated, as Phillip said, “That is completely out of pocket. You know that.”
“I apologize,” Girdusky said.
Girdusky to Hasan: I hope your beeper doesn’t go off pic.twitter.com/YmHhYnkDZ3
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 29, 2024
After a commercial break, Phillip apologized to Hasan and noted that Girdusky was no longer at the table.
“There is a line that was crossed there, and it’s not acceptable to me,” Phillip said. “It’s not acceptable to us at this network. We want discussion. We want people who disagree with each other to talk to each other. But when you cross the line of a complete lack of civility, that is not going to happen here on this show. It’s a heated time. We’re in the middle of a political season. We are eight days from a presidential election, but we can have conversations about what is happening in this country without resorting to the lowest of the lowest kind of discourse. I want to address that and I want to apologize to the viewers at home, because we want to be able to hear each other, we want to be able to talk to each other.”
Hasan was an anchor for MSNBC his departure earlier this year. He then started his own media company, Zeteo.
The post CNN Panelist Pulled From ‘NewsNight’ After Making “Lowest Of The Lowest” Verbal Attack On Mehdi Hasan appeared first on Deadline.
