NEW YORK (AP) — CNN has banned conservative writer Ryan Gidursky from the network after a controversial broadcast in which he told panelist Mehdi Hasan, “I hope your pager doesn’t go off.”

“Did you just say I had to 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. It was widely believed that the attack was carried out by Israel.

Hasan and Gidursky sat on a panel on “News Night” Monday night and discussed Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, where speakers made a variety of racist comments and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of trash.” The panel discussion descended into back-and-forth bickering after Gidursky told Hasan, a commentator and founder of the media company Zeteo, that “you have been called an anti-Semite more than anyone else at this table.”

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

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

CNN had a heated discussion about the Trump rally, where the racist and other derogatory language was a sign of how tensions are coming to a boil with just a week to go until a highly contentious and contentious Election Day that will challenge the political and cultural values ​​of reflects the country. rifts.

Despite that fragmentation, Phillip said that “we can have conversations about what’s happening in this country without resorting to the basest… kind of discourse.”

CNN said there is “no room for racism or bigotry at CNN or on our airwaves,” and said Gidursky would not be allowed back on the network.

Gidursky responded in a message to X: “You can stay on CNN if you falsely call every Republican a Nazi,” but apparently not “if you make a joke. I’m glad America sees what CNN stands for.”

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