Denise McAllister, a conservative writer who Meghan McCain infamously dragged on Twitter last week, has been dropped from right-wing publications The Federalist and The Daily Wire.
“I was fired when I criticized a gay man who mocked my heterosexual relationship,” she tweeted Sunday. “Yet no one defended me when I stood for masculinity and God’s design for sexuality despite outlets saying they represent Judeo-Christian values about sexuality, identity and purpose. What is truth?”
The furor surrounding McAllister, whose Twitter handle is “DC McAllister,” started when she bashed the co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” in a tweet last Monday, calling them “delusional mental midgets.”
McCain, one the show’s co-hosts and a daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), quickly fired back at McAllister by simply reminding her that “you were at my wedding.” The cutting remark prompted a slew of Internet memes.
McAllister later claimed on Twitter that her criticism was not directed at McCain, but “The View and the mental midgets” that surround her.
Fast forward to Saturday when McAllister, who has written that women should not strive for equality with men in many areas, tweeted that she “slipped” up by trying to have a conversation while her husband watched an NCAA college basketball tournament game.
The journalist Yashar Ali retweeted the post, adding a sad-faced emoji and the comment, “Oh Denise.” (Ali has written freelance pieces for HuffPost.)
McAllister responded with a series of homophobic tweets aimed at Ali, who is gay.
“A gay man commenting on a heterosexual relationship is just. Sad. Pathetic really,” McAllister wrote in one tweet, which has since been deleted.
She later wrote in another now-deleted tweet, “Oh so sad. [Ali] is lost. He doesn’t know his purpose as a man. He doesn’t know his purpose as a human being. He doesn’t know his purpose as an individual. So he wallows and tries to find himself in another man’s asshole. Sad.”
Ali weighed in on McAllister’s comments in a tweet early Sunday, noting that he’s proud to be gay, Iranian and Catholic.
Less than an hour later, Ben Domenech, editor in chief of The Federalist and Meghan McCain’s husband, tweeted that McAllister would no longer write for his publication. Domenech told HuffPost that McAllister had written for The Federalist as a freelancer.
“She wasn’t technically fired because she was never on staff,” he said. “We have hundreds of freelance contributors. She won’t be one of them going forward.”
McAllister soon after tweeted that she wished her former colleagues at The Federalist well and lamented that she had been “fired” for criticizing “a gay man who mocked my heterosexual relationship.”
In another since-deleted tweet, McAllister said she “quit” The Daily Wire after its editor in chief, Ben Shapiro, messaged her and said she was “no longer welcome” because of her homophobic rant.
Hours later, McAllister appeared to reverse course. She apologized on Twitter to Ali for “responding to a perceived attack on my family” in the way that she did and said she regrets any embarrassment she caused Shapiro and Domenech.
Asked for comment, Ali told HuffPost that McAllister has not reached out to him. He declined to comment outside of what he had already written on Twitter.
Shapiro told HuffPost in an email Sunday afternoon that The Daily Wire has “no plans” for McAllister to write for them. He noted that McAllister had been a contributor and was not an employee.
McAllister did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.