‘It Was a Racist Comment’ (Exclusive)

With a week to go until Election Day, emotions are running high on both sides of the aisle. And on Monday night, those emotions boiled over into public view on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip when conservative commentator Ryan Girdusky made a bigoted remark to fellow panelist, Mehdi Hasan.

Phillip immediately took point on lowering the temperature of their heated exchange, making it clear that a line had been crossed. During a commercial break, Girdusky was asked to leave the studio and CNN later announced he had been banned from the network. While Hasan was invited to stay, the former MSNBC anchor opted to depart the program as well.

Speaking about that charged moment with TVNewser at ADWEEK’s Mediaweek event on Tuesday, Phillip compared the experience of wrangling back control of the panel to “trying to stop a bullfight in progress.”

“I’ve never had to kick people off the show before,” she continued, referencing Girdusky’s abrupt exit from the NewsNight studio. “I didn’t expect the fact that it would happen last night. But it was a racist comment, and he said it to someone sitting right in front of him. It just was not appropriate.”

The exchange between Girdusky and Hasan occurred during a larger discussion centered around former President Donald Trump‘s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. “If you don’t want to be called Nazis, stop doing, stop saying,” Hasan observed about the racist and antisemitic remarks heard throughout the rally. Girdusky responded that Hasan had been called an “antisemite more than anyone at this table.”

“I am in support of the Palestinians, so I am used to it,” Hasan replied, at which point Girdusky said: “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” a reference to an Israeli operation against Hamas in September that employed weaponized pagers. “Did your guest just say I should be killed on live TV?” Hasan said incredulously as the rest of the panel, including Phillip, leapt to his defense. 

While Girdusky apologized to Hasan on air, he later described his comment as “a joke” in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.