CNN Bans Right-Wing Guest for Telling Mehdi Hasan ‘I Hope Your Beeper Doesn’t Go Off’
Photo via screenshot of CNN
Ryan Girdusky is a right-wing troll who used to write speeches for the white supremacist Richard Spencer, and as of today, he is a former CNN panelist. Girdusky had an exchange with Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan last night where Hasan said he was a supporter of Palestinians, so he is used to being called an anti-Semite. Girdusky responded by saying “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” referencing Israel’s attack on Hezbollah where they planted explosive beepers on Hezbollah fighters and set them off in public spaces.
Girdusky to Hasan: I hope your beeper doesn’t go off pic.twitter.com/YmHhYnkDZ3
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 29, 2024
CNN released a statement afterwards:
There is zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air. We aim to foster thoughtful conversations and debate including between people who profoundly disagree with each other in order to explore important issues and promote mutual understanding. But we will not allow guests to be demeaned or for the line of civility to be crossed. Ryan Girdusky will not be welcomed back at our network.
This is disgusting, and it is yet another demonstration of how soft and delusional the right-wing is. I have written a lot lately about how fundamentally weak they all reveal themselves to be when they leave their safe space for bigotry and have to join the rest of us in society, and Girdusky’s cowardly response to Hasan’s face contrasted to his defiant lie he told about it online is an object lesson in how right-wing conceptions of reality are based entirely on known falsehoods. They are so poisoned by propaganda at this point, they simply cannot operate in anything resembling a shared reality with non-right-wingers.
The look on your face when you realized they were going to call you out on your racist bullshit was so funny. You immediately started lying about what you just did pic.twitter.com/kU77O8WvoH
— Wild Geerters (@steinkobbe) October 29, 2024
Abby Phillip apologizing to Mehdi Hasan and interjecting in Girdusky’s hatred was good moderating work, but as Rep. Rashida Tlaib pointed out, CNN bears responsibility for this too. They have been platforming anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bigotry all year, and Jake Tapper and CNN elevating and promoting Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s lie about Rashida Tlaib is one of many examples of how this kind of evil expressed by Girdusky permeates so much of the rest of their coverage.
The fact of the matter is that over the last year, American mainstream media has largely functioned as a propaganda apparatus for the Israeli government, so it should be no surprise when CNN invites a right-wing hack to communicate the Israeli government’s genocidal position to a Muslim man’s face. One look at Girdusky’s depraved Twitter account made it clear what CNN was dealing with long before they invited him to their network, and if they are going to ban every person who says something hateful on their airwaves, then they are going to have to ban a lot more right-wingers going forward given that hatred of non-white people is the animating principle of right-wing politics.