A CNN guest was removed from a roundtable Monday night and later banned from the network’s air for suggesting that a Muslim co-panelist was a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah after he merely said he supported Palestinians.
Ryan Girdusky, during a discussion about the Israel-Hamas war, told Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo News, “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off”—an allusion to Israel’s attack last month, in which the country’s forces detonated explosives it had secretly planted in pagers used by the Hezbollah militia group in Lebanon.
That comment was preceded by Hasan, who is Muslim, saying that he is a “supporter of the Palestinians,” and that therefore he has been accustomed to being called an antisemite.
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The network deemed the exchange serious enough to quickly denounce Girdusky and release a statement saying that he would not be allowed back on the air in any capacity.
“There is zero room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our air,” CNN told the Daily Beast in a statement. “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.”
Girdusky’s remark was similarly called out on the air by Hasan, former Biden-Harris campaign official Ashley Allison, and NewsNight anchor Abby Phillip.
“Did you just say I should die?” Hasan asked quizzically.
Girdusky, the former head of a pro-JD Vance SuperPAC and the founder of the 1776 Project PAC, which supports conservative school board candidates, denied the charge. After asking for clarification about who it was that Hasan supported, Girdusky claimed he had “misheard” him.
“Then I apologize,” he said repeatedly, saying he thought Hasan expressed support for Hamas.
The notoriously combative cable news personality immediately pushed back on the idea.
“Yeah,” Hasan said. “‘I went on CNN and said I support Hamas.’ What kind of idiot do you take us for? What a ridiculous thing to say.”
Phillip told him that what he said was “completely out of pocket.”
Girdusky, she added later, “crossed the line.” And that was enough to remove him from the panel during a subsequent commercial break.
After returning, Phillip apologized to Hasan and to her viewers.
“There is a line that was crossed there, and it‘s not acceptable to me. It‘s not acceptable to us at this network,“ she said. ”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,” Phillip continued. “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.”
Hasan was also notably absent from the panel after it resumed. Phillip, in a video posted to X later on, said Hasan was encouraged to continue with his scheduled appearance, but he chose not to.
Girdusky, for his part, brushed off his remarks as “a joke” in a defiant statement posted to X.
“You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi and have taken money from Qatar-funded media,” he wrote. “Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke. I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.”
