CNN has banned conservative writer Ryan Gidursky from the network following a contentious on-air exchange where he told panelist Mehdi Hasan that "I hope your beeper doesn't go off."
"Did you just say I should die?" Hasan said, responding to Gidursky's apparent reference to September's attack where pagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria exploded simultaneously. The attack was widely believed to be carried out by Israel.
Hasan and Gidursky were on a panel on "News Night" Monday night, talking about Donald Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden, where speakers made a variety of racist comments and referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage." The panel discussion devolved into back-and-forth bickering after Gidursky said to Hasan, a commentator and founder of the media company Zeteo, that "you've been called an anti-Semite more than anyone else at this table."
Host Abby Phillip said that Gidursky's beeper comment was "completely out of pocket" and he apologized. But after a commercial break, he was gone.
Philip apologized to Hasan and to viewers. She said Gidursky, author of the book "They're Not Listening How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution," had crossed a line.
