March 29, 2018

Laura Ingraham Apologizes for Mocking David Hogg—Right After Companies Pull Advertising

The Fox News host described her uncharacteristic humility as in the “spirit of Holy Week.”

TripAdvisor and Rachael Ray’s pet food brand Nutrish have become the first companies to announce that they will stop advertising on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, after the host taunted David Hogg, the 18-year-old high school senior who has become one of the most prominent voices in the student movement for gun control action, for getting rejected by a string of California colleges. 

Ingraham has been under intense fire for reacting to a video interview with Hogg, in which he briefly discussed his disappointment with the rejections. But Hogg said that he wasn’t surprised: “I think there’s a lot of amazing people that don’t get into college, not only [who] do things that I do, but because their voices just aren’t heard in the tsunami of people that apply to colleges in such an impacted school system here in America.”

Somehow, Ingraham portrayed Hogg’s remarks as whining. 

“In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency,” a spokesperson for the popular travel site told CNBC on Thursday. “As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.”

Nutrish on Thursday posted a tweet responding directly to a boycott list Hogg had created naming Ingraham’s top advertisers to announce its decision to pull advertising from Ingraham’s show.

Shortly after her loss of two sponsors, Ingraham issued an apology on Twitter and invited Hogg to return to her show to discuss the gun debate. The host attributed her contrition to “the spirit of Holy Week.” 

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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