Fox News Risks Wrath Of Donald Trump, Keeping Jeanine Pirro Off Another Week After Racist On-Air Remark
Fox News Channel will keep Saturday primetime host Jeanine Pirro off the air another weekend in wake of her scathing remarks about Rep Ilhan Omar.
Like last week, Justice with Judge Jeanine will be replaced Saturday at 9 PM with a repeat of its Scandalous docuseries.
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Pirro’s show had lost advertisers since an edition of the show in which she seemed to question the national allegiance of Rep. Ilhan Omar because the she wears a hijab.
NerdWallet was among advertisers that said they would stay away from Pirro’s show in the wake of her incendiary remark about Omar.
Fox News had condemned Pirro’s comment, saying, “We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar. They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.”
For her part, Pirro insisted she was only trying to “start a debate.”
Fox News also scolded Pirro back in November when she, and fellow Fox News host Sean Hannity, two favorites of President Donald Trump, appeared at a campaign rally POTUS held in Missouri.
As it had done last week when contacted for comment, Fox News responded “We are not commenting on internal scheduling matters.”
The decision to pull Pirro came after her show two Saturdays back, when she opened talking about the congresswoman. “Think about it: Omar wears a hijab. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
Pirro’s wasn’t the only primetime “opinion” programming costing Fox News Channel advertisers over content. Tucker Carlson’s FNC show shed major advertisers when Media Matters began rolling out compilation audio clips of offensive remarks Carlson made in on-air chats with shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, between 2006-11.
Shortly after the ad fracas erupted over Pirro and Carlson’s remarks, Fox News held its first ever upfront presentation at which it heavily promoted its non-primetime far-less controversial programming to advertisers. Media Matters insisted it was an emergency meeting, though Fox News insisted it was a long-planned event.
However, Fox News’s efforts to promote its straight-news dayparts and downplay its fire-breathing opinion stars got no help from the President of the United States.
So distraught when Donald Trump discovered Pirro had been pulled off the air last Saturday, he took to twitter to savage the network and trash several of its straight-news reporters, singling out recent First Amendment Award winner and Fox News’s ace in the hole, Shep Smith, who Trump dismissed as its “lowest-rated.”
Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro. The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well. Fox …..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019
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….must stay strong and fight back with vigor. Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country. The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them. Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019
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….to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine. Your competitors are jealous – they all want what you’ve got – NUMBER ONE. Don’t hand it to them on a silver platter. They can’t beat you, you can only beat yourselves!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019
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Were @FoxNews weekend anchors, @ArthelNeville and @LelandVittert, trained by CNN prior to their ratings collapse? In any event, that’s where they should be working, along with their lowest rated anchor, Shepard Smith!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019
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