MAGA Pundit Banned from CNN After Racist Remark to Muslim Co-Panelist Mehdi Hasan: 'Hope Your Beeper Doesn't Go Off'

Mar. 15, 2025

Mehdi Hassan and Ryan Gidursky on CNN.Photo:CNN

CNN

CNN has banned MAGA pundit Ryan Girdusky from appearing on its network after he directed a comment at a Muslim journalist suggesting that he was a part of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

The comment is a reference to an Israeli attack in which pagers exploded killing members of the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon last month, according toNBC News.

This prompted Hasan to respond, “Did you just say I should die? You just said I should be killed.” He then questioned if Girdusky was a “racist, violent person inciting violence against” him. After he was chided for his comment, Girdusky apologized and said that he “thought” Hasan “said Hamas.”

Mehdi Hasan.Ilya Savenok/Variety via Getty

Ilya Savenok/Variety via Getty

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She issued an apology to Hasan that was shared onXand also directed to viewers at home while on-air for “what was said” at the roundtable, saying, “There is a line that was crossed there, and it‘s not acceptable to me.”

”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,” she noted.

“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.”

“You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi and have taken money from Qatar-funded media. Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke,” he wrote. “I’m glad America gets to see what CNN stands for.”

Hasan has not yet issued a statement of his own on social media, but re-shared Phillip’s post and CNN’s statement about the show.

source: people.com