NEW YORK — CNN has banned conservative writer Ryan Gidursky from the network following a controversial on-air exchange in which he told panelist Mehdi Hasan, “I hope your pager doesn’t go off.”

“Did you just say I should die?” Hasan said, in response to Gidursky’s apparent reference to the September elections attack where pagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria exploded simultaneously. It is widely believed that the attack was carried out by Israel.

Hasan and Gidursky were part of 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 called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage. The roundtable degenerated into bickering after Gidursky told Hasan, a commentator and founder of media company Zeteo, that “you have been called an anti-Semite more than anyone else at this table.”

Host Abby Phillip said Gidursky’s sonic comment was “completely out of pocket” and he apologized. But after a commercial break, he left.

Philip apologized to Hasan and the viewers. She said Gidursky, author of the book “They’re Not Listening: How Elites Created the National Populist Revolution,” had crossed a line.

CNN had a heated discussion about Trump’s rally, where racist and other demeaning remarks were a sign of how tensions are coming to a head just a week before a hotly contested and controversial Election Day that reflects political and culture of the country. cracks.

Despite this fragmentation, Phillip said “we can have conversations about what’s happening in this country without resorting to the lowest rhetoric.”

CNN, saying there is “no place for racism or intolerance at CNN or on our airwaves,” said Gidursky would not be allowed to return to the network.

Gidursky responded in a post on I’m glad America can see what CNN stands for.

___

David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.