CNN bans conservative writer after ‘beeper’ comment to commentator

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

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

He was responding to Gidursky’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 have been carried out by Israel.

Hasan and Gidursky were on a panel on News Night on 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 Gidursky 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 Gidursky’s beeper comment was “completely out of pocket” and he apologised.

But after an ad break, he was gone.

Phillip apologised to Hasan and to viewers.

She said Gidursky, 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 Gidursky would not be allowed back on the network.

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