A right-wing panelist was removed from CNN anchor Abby Phillip’s show on Monday after a “vile attack” he made against journalist and political commentator Mehdi Hasan on the show.
Conservative commentator Ryan Girdusky, founder of the anti-critical race theory the 1776 Commission, told Hassan: “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off” during a discussion on the rhetoric from former President Donald Trump’s New York City rally on Sunday.
“Did you just say I should die?” Hasan asked in apparent disbelief. “Did you just say I should be killed on live TV?”
“No, I did not say that,” Girdusky responds.
“You said you hope my beeper doesn’t go off,” Hasan pointed out.
Girdusky asked Hasan if he supported the Palestinian armed group Hamas, to which Hasan responded that he supported Palestinians.
Hassan then said: “This is America in 2024… […] Forget the racism. It’s I should die.”
If absolutely nothing else, it’s conflating support for Palestinians with support for Hamas and is suggesting that the use of indiscriminate explosives is a cool and funny thing to do (assuming you believe him that it was a joke).
But more to the point, if you were to randomly say “I hope you don’t die” or “I hope you don’t get cancer” or even “I hope you don’t stub your toe in the middle of the night” while having a heated argument with someone, it will never be taken as you actually hoping for those things to not happen.