Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers sounded off about the upcoming election and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and he zeroed in on the racist rally
held at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
“You want me to do a PSA right now?” Rivers said, eliciting laughter during a Monday night press conference before his Bucks took on the Boston Celtics.
“You know, obviously, I’m biased, and I’m not going to do a ‘Pop’ here today,” Rivers said, referring to legendary San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who called Trump a “small,” “pathetic,” and “damaged man” (among other things) during a recent press conference
.
“[Popovich] was right. Everything that he said, you know?” Rivers continued. “If you saw Madison Square Garden, I mean, come on, right?”
Rivers described the MSG rally as “atrocious.”
“If you’re a Black man or a woman, or brown, Latino, Puerto Rican or—they hit everybody, you know, and it was awful,” he said.
Rivers is right about all but one thing: They didn’t “hit everybody” so much as they hit everybody who isn’t white. In fact, they seem to have come dangerously close to insulting white women as well.
The NBA coach has made his allegiance to the Democratic nominee clear. He recently appeared in a video with second gentleman Doug Emhoff, urging people to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Want to hear Spurs coach Popovich expounding on what a waste of space Trump is? Enjoy this clip.
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich goes off about Donald Trump during a press conference: “He’s pathetic. He’s small. He’s a whiner… He’s a damaged man.”pic.twitter.com/P35arUNYDp
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held what was billed as a “news conference” Tuesday morning at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where reporters wondered if he’d apologize for the racist remarks
made at his Madison Square Garden rally that labeled Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage
.”
But Trump never apologized.
Instead, it was like Festivus
came a few months early for the former president, who showed up more than an hour late
and aired his usual grievances in a low-energy speech before finally defending his racist rally as a “love fest.”
“I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden,” Trump said
. “The love, the love in that room. It was breathtaking. And you could’ve filled it many, many times with the people who weren’t able to get in… It was like a lovefest and it was my honor to be involved.”
Trump: I don’t think anybody has ever seen anything like what happened the other night at Madison Square Garden. The love in that room… It was like a love fest and it was my honor to be involved. pic.twitter.com/umW3VvUF3g
Trump refused to apologize for the racist comments even before the news conference, telling
ABC News’ Rachel Scott that he didn’t know the comedian and didn’t hear the joke.
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” Trump told Scott.
Trump’s campaign is worried
about the possible fallout
from Sunday’s rally, which was meant to be his closing argument to voters but has instead turned into a public relations nightmare.
“Apparently the October surprise was a presidential campaign committing mass political suicide on stage at MSG,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration official, told
Politico.
Puerto Rican superstars and politicians have loudly denounced the racist joke that denigrated Puerto Rico, which has struggled to rebuild
after Hurricane Maria practically wiped out the island’s infrastructure in 2017. Trump, who was in office at the time, also blocked aid
from being sent to help the island recover, which Vice President Kamala Harris has been highlighting in the closing days of the campaign, along with the racist joke.
The speech was filled with so many lies that CNN cut away from it to debunk the nonsense coming out of Trump’s mouth while the event was in progress.
“We’re going to dip out of Donald Trump’s remarks there, he is making a number of false claims so we want to interrupt what he is saying for a few moments and go straight to Daniel Dale, our fact checker,” said anchor Jim Acosta.
Trump also never took a single question
, meaning this was not a news conference at all but rather a low-energy rally for the fervent supporters in the room who clapped and cheered dutifully.
“Trump’s remarks at Mar-a-Lago this morning are emblematic of his other speeches in this farewell tour from campaigning: lower energy, less focused and running late,” NPR reporter Stephen Fowler wrote
on X.
SAN FRANCISCO — The man who was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for attacking the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer in their California home was given a life term without the possibility of parole on Tuesday following a separate state trial.
A San Francisco jury in June found David DePape guilty of charges including aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary and false imprisonment of an elder.
Before sentencing DePape to life for the kidnapping conviction, Judge Harry Dorfman rejected defense attorneys’ arguments that he be granted a new state trial for the 2022 attack against Paul Pelosi
, who was 82 years old at the time.
“It’s my intention that Mr. DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” Dorfman said while handing out the punishment. He later said, “I don’t feel sympathy for you. I feel sympathy for the victim in this case, who’s lucky to be alive.”
Adam Lipson, a San Francisco deputy public defender, had asked Dorfman to consider DePape’s mental health and isolation that made him susceptible to online propaganda.
David DePape, who bludgeoned Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer, is seen on Dec. 13, 2013, in Berkeley, Calif.
“This is a man who has always been a peaceful, law-abiding person up until his activation,” Lipson said before the punishment was handed down.
When given the chance to address the court prior to his sentencing, DePape, dressed in prison orange and with his brown hair in a ponytail, spoke at length about Sept. 11 being an inside job, his ex-wife being replaced by a body double, and his government-provided attorneys conspiring against him.
“I’m a psychic,” DePape told the court, reading from sheets of paper. “The more I meditate, the more psychic I get.”
The judge interrupted DePape multiple times to ask if he wanted to address the jury’s verdict or his conduct on the night of the attack, but DePape ignored the offers.
In a letter read in court by the victim’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, Paul Pelosi called for the maximum sentence, saying the “last peaceful sleep” he had ended abruptly “when the defendant violently broke into my home, burst into my bedroom and stood over my bed with a hammer and zip ties demanding to see my wife, yelling ‘Where’s Nancy?’”
He said the attack left him with bumps on his head, a metal plate in it, dizziness and nerve damage in his left hand. Sleeping alone at home evokes memories of the attack, he said.
Previously, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a federal official’s family member and attempting to kidnap a federal official. In May, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison
.
Although DePape expressed remorse for his actions at the federal sentencing, he did not do that on Tuesday. Judges in both cases said they could not ignore the seriousness of targeting elected officials.
In this image taken from a San Francisco Police Department body camera, Paul Pelosi, right, fights for control of a hammer with his assailant, David DePape, during a brutal attack in the couple’s San Francisco home on Oct. 28, 2022.
Judge Dorfman on Tuesday also sentenced DePape to additional years on the other counts, but all the sentences, including the federal one, will run concurrently. He said that if an appellate court overturns his sentence of life without parole, he will ask that the case be sent back to his court for resentencing.
Lipson told reporters after the hearing that he will appeal the ruling. “This was a really tragic end to a tragic story,” he said.
The prosecutors, San Francisco assistant district attorneys Sean Connolly and Phoebe Maffei, said in a statement that the sentence reflects the seriousness of DePape’s conduct and the harm he inflicted on an innocent man.
“There is no rejoicing in such cases. There are no winners,” it said.
The defense argued that the state trial amounted to double jeopardy, saying that although the state and federal counts weren’t exactly the same, the two cases stem from the same act. The judge dismissed some of the state charges, but he kept others that weren’t covered by the federal case.
DePape, a Canadian citizen who has been living in the U.S. for years, admitted during his federal trial that he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage, record his interrogation of her, and “break her kneecaps” if she did not admit to the lies he said she told about “Russiagate,” a reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a Monday night appearance on CNN, WWE Hall of Fame wrestler Mick Foley said that he is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
The retired performer was a guest on “Laura Coates Live.”
“Real men respect strong women, they don’t live in fear of them,” Foley said, describing himself as a longtime supporter of the Democratic nominee for president. “I just believe she’s a positive person, a very competent person. I want to embrace the joy that she brings. The optimism and not the fear that has been Donald Trump’s hallmark.”
Foley wrestled under
his real name and also used the names Mankind, Cactus Jack, and Dude Love. During his time as a wrestler with WWE, Foley won three world championship titles and eight tag-team titles. He was inducted
into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.
He also previously served
on the board of RAINN, or the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which advocates on behalf of abuse survivors.
Foley expressed his distaste for the Republican presidential nominee’s rhetoric, which he said “demeans citizens of this country.” He also criticized Trump for talking down to women and cited Trump’s history of not paying contractors, which Foley characterized as “screwing over his workers.”
The CNN interview was a follow-up to a viral video
that Foley posted last Wednesday in response to a podcast interview
between Trump and the Undertaker, a well-known wrestler also in the Hall of Fame.
During that interview, the Undertaker remarked that Trump had made politics “fun.”
“For about three weeks in 2016, but it’s eight years later and there’s absolutely nothing fun about this man,” Foley said in response.
Trump also has the backing of Hulk Hogan, one of the most popular wrestlers of the 1980s and 1990s. Hogan spoke at the racist Trump rally
in Madison Square Garden on Sunday and also spoke before the Republican National Convention earlier this year.
In August, Hogan was caught on video
ranting in a bar about how he wanted to “body slam Kamala Harris” and asked patrons, “Want me to drop the leg on Kamala?” The leg drop was Hogan’s signature move
in the ring.
In the video, Hogan also made racist comments about Native Americans and Harris’ Indian heritage. In 2015, WWE temporarily cut ties with him after a video of Hogan
spouting racial epithets surfaced.
When he isn’t indulging in racism like his pal Trump, Hogan also has a reputation as a union buster
, allegedly working behind the scenes against efforts to unionize wrestlers.
Trump recently came under
fire from the United Auto Workers for promoting Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s policy of retribution against workers planning to strike.
After spending the last four years whining about President Joe Biden’s envy-of-the-world economy
, billionaire Elon Musk is promising to crater it if Donald Trump wins in November.
If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit – there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy – this economy propped up with debt (generating asset bubbles) and artificially suppressed wages (as a result of illegal immigration). Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.
To be clear, Musk is confirming that his and Trump’s plan would “tumble” the markets and there would be an economic “storm.” But hey, once people grokked the vibe and “realize[d]” that things were better in that economic hellscape, there would be rainbows, unicorns, and ponies.
“The jump in jobs, along with immigrants’ consumption of goods and services in the United States, also bolsters GDP growth,” a July report
from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found. “[H]igher immigration has contributed about 0.1 percentage points to GDP growth annually in 2022 and 2023 and is projected to do so again in 2024.”
In fact, the Dallas Fed says that the U.S. needs more immigration in the coming years to support continued economic growth:
If immigration normalizes, it will return to rates that are insufficient to sustain the type of economic growth the U.S. is accustomed to. The nation is in a sort of demographic autumn, and winter is coming. The retirement of the baby boomers and overall aging of the workforce, as well as low and falling birth rates mean population growth will become entirely dependent on immigration by 2040, as deaths of U.S.-born will outpace births.
In other words, undocumented workers also subsidize our own entitlement programs. Or, as the Center for Immigration Studies
recently put it, “Undocumented immigrants also paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance in 2022, programs for which they are ineligible.”
Then there is the deficit-reduction part of the post that Musk endorsed. And that basically means cutting every program that helps the poor and middle class.
In a virtual town hall last Friday, Musk said
, “We have to reduce spending to live within our means, and that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
Worse, Trump has said he would give Musk the power
to take a chainsaw to the federal budget. And indeed, Musk claimed
at Trump’s racist rally in New York City that he could cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget.
Since October of last year, the federal government has spent $6.7 trillion
. Cutting roughly a third of that would be cataclysmic—and even more so since the cuts would be felt disproportionately in domestic spending. You just know defense won’t be touched, though veterans programs would almost surely take a hit. It would be funny (in an ironic way) seeing the nearly $100 billion
spent on American farmers every year evaporate overnight, given rural America’s strong support for Republicans. …
Musk doesn’t give a damn. He’ll be fine no matter what, even if he casts himself as some sort of hero, saying
that he would “balance the budget immediately.”
“Obviously, a lot of people who are taking advantage of government are going to be upset about that,” he said in the town hall. “I’ll probably need a lot of security, but it’s got to be done.”
Musk’s model is Argentine President Javier Milei, who literally campaigned with a chainsaw
to symbolize his plans to eviscerate his nation’s budget if elected. And how’s that going for Argentina? “Argentina recession deepens as economy shrinks more than expected,” read a recent Reuters headline
. Yet the reality is that Argentina was an economic basket case, caught in a lose-lose situation that could very well call for desperate measures.
That’s not the case in the United States, yet Musk and his cognitively addled puppet Trump seem hellbent on delivering the same kind of painful austerity for the world’s largest economy, by far, and one that is currently the world’s envy
.
And the thing is, Musk and Trump aren’t hiding their agenda. People are just too captivated by the Republican campaign’s racism and misogyny to care.
People are being promised that they will lose their jobs and prosperity, and this election is still close.
Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon was released
from a federal prison on Tuesday. Bannon served four months after being convicted on two counts of contempt of Congress in October 2022
.
The right-wing podcast host served his time after numerous appeals and rejections
, including the Trump-friendly Supreme Court’s June decision
to deny another request to delay his prison sentence.
Bannon couldn’t stay out of prison despite being the beneficiary of one of the sloppy pardons Trump handed out
at the end of his term in office. He was indicted on federal charges of fraud and conspiracy alleging that he and other organizers of the “We Build the Wall” nonprofit used donor money to enrich themselves instead of actually building a wall along the southern border of the United States. Bannon is still facing similar fraud charges
from Manhattan prosecutors.
CNN reports
that Bannon’s podcast has diminished in popularity during his absence, and even a revolving crew of MAGA celebrity hosts including fellow ex-Trump adviser (and ex-convict) Peter Navarro
hasn’t done much for its ratings. And while many believe Bannon’s show will likely recover now that their No. 1 trainwreck
is back at the helm, a spike in ratings might not be enough to have any impact on an election that is only one week away.
“I think it’s going to take some time to bring the audience back and to mobilize them,” Madeline Peltz, deputy director for rapid response at Media Matters, told CNN
. “I don’t think the one-week period between now and the election is enough time to complete that, but I think really, you’ll see it kick into high gear in the post-election chaos that we’re all sort of anticipating.”
Bannon’s New York trial for his border-wall fraud was delayed while he served his prison time and is set to begin in December
. Thoughts and prayers.
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Tuesday that the decision by The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times against endorsing a presidential candidate was disappointing and a sign of billionaires attempting to curry favor with Donald Trump.
The decision by the owners of the outlets comes as Trump has renewed threats
of retribution against media entities that accurately report on him and his campaign.
Harris’ remarks came during an interview on “The Breakfast Club” radio show. Host Charlamagne tha God asked Harris to react to the announcements from the two newspapers.
“It’s billionaires in Donald Trump’s club,” Harris said. “That’s who’s in his club. That’s who he hangs out with. That’s who he cares about.”
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with a reported
net worth of over $206 billion. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times is reportedly worth
over $7 billion.
Harris went on to remind listeners of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut taxes for the ultrawealthy and large corporations but did not assist
the middle class or spark job growth, which Trump had promised.
In a closed-door meeting in April, Trump promised
wealthy donors that he would extend those tax cuts if he is elected to another term and asked them to donate to his campaign to ensure the policy would be enacted.
The Post and Times have been widely criticized
since both papers said they would not back a candidate in the 2024 election. Both papers endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020. According to reporting from the Post itself, an editorial had been drafted endorsing Harris before Bezos spiked its publication.
NPR reported that the backlash against the Post has led to at least 200,000 subscriptions
being canceled. That represents about 8% of its subscriber base. Molly Roberts and David Hoffman, both members of the Post’s editorial board, have resigned
from the board in protest.
“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump. I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment,” Hoffman wrote.
Editor-at-large Robert Kagan and editorial contributor Michele Norris also resigned from the paper, citing the decision.
In a publisher’s note published Monday night, Bezos said
the decision against an endorsement because such endorsements purportedly “create a perception of bias” and “a perception of non-independence.”
Yet some commentators have noted
that the timing of the decisions—just a little over a week before the election rather than, say, a year ago—undermines Bezos’ argument. The Post and Times could have announced their editorial policies long before Trump’s latest round of anti-media attacks and without the background of a closely contested election, and the controversy would likely have been minimal (at least comparatively).
Adding more fuel to the fire, USA Today announced
on Monday that it would not be endorsing a presidential candidate. USA Today is owned by Gannett, and the company’s CEO Mike Reed is a multimillionaire
.
“Another L for Kamala Harris,” the Trump campaign said in a statement on Monday, touting USA Today’s decision as well as the previous decisions from Bezos and Soon-Shiong.
GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance tried to stop the bleeding from the Republican presidential ticket, after a comedian made a racist joke
about Puerto Rico and Latinos at a Trump campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
Vance said
Monday night that people need to get “over it” and “stop getting so offended” at the joke, in which Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and made a vulgar comment about Latinos and ejaculating without protection.
“A comedian told a joke, and I don’t think that’s news worth making,” Vance told a reporter at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, according to NBC News.
Vance added, “Maybe I’m old fashioned, or maybe I just grew up with a grandmother who had an especially foul mouth. But you know what I do? You know what I do when I think a joke is dumb or not funny? I don’t laugh.”
But voters don’t seem to be buying Vance’s argument, as the outrage over the so-called “joke” is not going away. The media, usually averse to calling things racist, has been unafraid to label
Trump’s MSG rally as such.
Puerto Rican superstars Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and Luis Fonsi all came out to condemn the joke and endorse
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
Puerto Rico’s GOP chairman is demanding
former President Donald Trump apologize
for the remark or he won’t vote for him.
The Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico also demanded that Trump apologize, writing
in a news release that, “It is not sufficient for your campaign to apologize. It is important that you, personally, apologize for these comments.”
“These kinds of remarks should not be a part of the political discourse of a civilized society,” Archbishop Roberto O. Gonzales Nieves wrote.
But getting Trump to apologize is another story. The 78-year-old never apologizes
, believing that he could never be wrong and that those who are offended by him are the problem. In fact, Trump usually doubles down when he’s caught in controversy.
Trump has yet to apologize for this latest mess, but instead felt the need to insist
to a mostly empty arena
in Georgia where he was holding a rally that he is “not a Nazi,” after many people compared
his MSG rally with the Nazi rally held at the famed arena in 1939.
Trump’s Republican allies fear
the Puerto Rico comments could do Trump’s campaign in, as key battleground states like Pennsylvania have a large Puerto Rican population that could swing a close election to Harris.
“Apparently the October surprise was a presidential campaign committing mass political suicide on stage at MSG,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee, told
Politico.
While residents of the island of Puerto Rico do not have a say
in the outcome of the presidential race, the large Puerto Rican diaspora does.
And about 8% of the Puerto Rican population in the United States lives in Pennsylvania, according
to data from the Pew Research Center, making them a key voting bloc in the battleground state that could determine the outcome of the election.
Politico reported that Puerto Ricans plan to protest
at a Trump rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.
And Puerto Rican Democratic activists are getting the word out about the comment to try to motivate voters to get out and vote for Harris.
“Puerto Ricans have a unique affinity for their homeland,” Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, who blasted out the racist Puerto Rico comments in 250,000 texts, told
The New York Times. “When you attack the island, it cuts so deep with the community.”
In the 2020 presidential election
, 63% of unmarried women voted for Joe Biden and 36% for Donald Trump—a 27-percentage-point spread. Married women, however, voted for Donald Trump 51-47. That’s a 16-point gap between unmarried and married women in support of Biden.
That’s not what’s amazing. This is:
Married women are not only more Republican than never-married women, they’re also more Republican than women who are divorced, separated, or widowed. That suggests men might have something to do with women’s voting patterns.
Pew Research Center has the most recent data
on this phenomenon. In their 2023 annual trends survey, they asked registered voters about their partisan allegiance.
Now, up front, Pew doesn’t draw a causal link between marriage and changes in a woman’s politics. We don’t know whether marriage makes women more Republican or whether Republican women are more likely to get and stay married.
That being said, marriage surely drives at least some women to the Republican Party, whether it’s because they’re assuming more traditional gender roles, because they feel less of a need to depend on government services in what is likely a multi-income household, or because of something else entirely.
Pew also finds that 64% of unmarried women who live with their partner are Democrats, while only 33% are Republicans. But that’s no doubt because unmarried cohabitation is way more common
among liberals, while conservatives are less likely to live together before getting hitched.
Funny enough, 61% of never-married men are Democratic. That’s either a function of age—younger people are more likely to be unmarried and liberal—or an indictment of the institution of marriage itself. No wonder Republicans are obsessed with not just getting people married (like Taylor Swift) but keeping them married by attacking no-fault divorce
.
I doubt the role that marriage may play in shaping women’s politics is news to many women. After all, a lot of them have been waging a guerilla campaign to convince their married counterparts to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and lie to their husbands about it.
All throughout this article, you’ll find pictures of some of the messages that women have left on bathroom mirrors, women’s gym locker rooms, on tampon boxes, and other places where husbands won’t see them. And the message is clear: Your vote is secret, and your husband doesn’t have to know.
This clever ad from Vote Common Good features Julia Roberts delivering the same message:
In the voting booth, women still have the right to choose. New and important ad from @VoteCommon
featuring Julia Roberts reminds women that no one will know who they voted for. Pass it on. pic.twitter.com/XALnryVPNm
This NBC News story
from late September has some delightful anecdotes:
“I gave somebody the advice when she’s like, ‘I don’t know where to put it,’ and so I said my favorite thing to do is to put them on tampon boxes, birth control boxes, diaper bags, [that] kind of thing,” said Susan Visser Saez, 61, of Bella Vista, Arkansas.
Donna Savage, 76, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, said, “Just today, I was in bathrooms at a couple of places and put them up in each stall,” plus bathroom mirrors.
Liz Nace, 81, of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, always keeps sticky notes in her purse, spreading the pro-Harris messages in stores and restaurants to “atone for the fact that I voted for Trump in 2016.”
I know many of you are partaking in this form of guerrilla activism. Please share your stories, and hopefully, we can inspire more women to take part!
As for men—and you white dudes in particular—you’ve got to take care of your own house.
This guy nails it. “The people that are threatening democracy are not black, they’re not Muslim, there not immigrants. They’re dudes that look like me. We gotta start calling these assholes out every single place that we find them.” pic.twitter.com/ML9o4QLALf
— James, hooting and/or hollering (@FunnyLikeAClown) October 28, 2024
CNN pulled conservative activist and commentator Ryan Girdusky off the air and said he would not be invited back on the network following a bigoted outburst Monday night. The controversy occurred as pro-Trump voices (and Donald Trump himself) have accelerated racist rhetoric a week before the election.
During a roundtable discussion of Trump’s racist rally in Madison Square Garden during CNN’s “NewsNight,” progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan said he was used to derogatory comments from the right because he is a supporter of the Palestinian people.
“Well I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” Girdusky replied. The comment was a reference to an attack on Hezbollah
members who had their pagers detonated, killing at least 37 people. Hassan called out Girdusky for the comment, asking, “Did you just say I should be killed?”
After a commercial break, host Abby Phillip said Girdusky
had been removed and apologized to the other panelists for the inappropriate outburst. CNN later issued a statement
that said the pundit “will not be welcomed back at our network.”
Girdusky, who has a history
of racist comments
, responded to CNN in a tweet, writing, “Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke. I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.”
CNN has frequently been involved
in controversy involving bigoted statements from pro-Trump pundits that it has hired or invited to comment. The incident and Girdusky’s response to criticism of his comments echoes what conservatives are doing in the final week of the presidential campaign.
Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, casually traded on racism
and other forms of bigotry in service of Trump’s campaign. Then, when conservatives have been harshly criticized for this behavior, the racism is dismissed as merely a joke or not serious.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, exemplified this when asked about MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s statement
at the rally that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.”
“Maybe it’s a stupid, racist joke as you said, maybe it’s not. I haven’t seen it. I’m not going to comment on the specifics of the joke,” Vance said
, adding, “But I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I’m just—I’m so over it.”
But the backlash that the “jokes” have received show that contrary to Vance’s argument, bigoted commentary in the middle of a serious election isn’t being brushed off. The conservatives making these types of arguments, echoing the rhetoric of Trump, are being forced through public pressure to be accountable for their words and actions, and people are not “over it.”
