Fox News host Laura Ingraham featured white supremacist Paul Nehlen in a graphic of “prominent voices censored on social media” on her show “The Ingraham Angle” on Thursday night, and some are outraged.
In one segment, Ingraham claims that recent criticisms from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Facebook proliferating doctored videos are part of a plan by liberals to “silence conservative voices” ahead of the 2020 election.
Ingraham talked about this claim with conservative commentator Candace Owens, who said that this is “just the way the internet works” and insisted that Clinton’s and Pelosi’s remarks are an attempt to silence voters.
Owens went on to say that silencing and banning conservatives “works for us,” because “when you ban somebody’s favorite political commentator ... they double down and dig their heels in.”
Ingraham then featured a graphic of “prominent voices censored on social media” that included Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Owens, Michelle Malkin, Dan Scavino, James Woods and Nehlen.
Nehlen is a notable inclusion as he’s a white nationalist so racist and anti-Semitic that he was kicked off Twitter and Gab. The Republican Party of Wisconsin even cut ties with him after his Twitter suspension, and a state party spokesman said he had “no place in the Republican Party.”
HuffPost was the first to confront Nehlen about his open embrace of explicit white nationalism back in 2017, and as of April 2018, The Daily Beast declared that he was becoming one of the highest-profile white nationalists in America.
Just some of his horrifying behavior includes his open support for the white supremacists who marched at the 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where an attende drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters and killed anti-racist activist Heather Heyer; he also has a locked Telegram channel where he calls himself “Uncle Paul’ and “shares memes praising mass murderers as religious heroes.”
The site Angry White Men, a blog that tracks white supremacists, has long documented Nehlen’s history of racist and anti-Semitic posts on social media. A recent entry in April of this year involved a report on Nehlen arguing with another white supremacist about the best way to start a race war.
Considering his background, Ingraham’s inclusion of Nehlen on a list of “prominent voices” was shocking for many on social media. Here’s what people had to say:
It’s unclear whether Ingraham’s inclusion of Nehlen will spark advertisers to leave her show, which has happened before.
Numerous companies fled the show last year after she mocked David Hogg, a survivor of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.
HuffPost has reached out to Ingraham’s advertisers and will update this report accordingly.
Thus far, Netsuite has declined to comment on its status with Ingraham and her show.
A spokesperson for the Starkist tuna brand said: “We do not endorse individual opinions. Our television ads appear on a number of cable networks as part of our national media buy.”
Abhi Lokesh, CEO of the photo printing service Fracture, published a blog post Friday saying the company would cease running advertisements on Ingraham’s show.
“Last night one of our ads aired during an episode of The Ingraham Angle during which Laura Ingraham expressed alarming views that run entirely counter to the values that we hold as a company. We are taking this matter very seriously and as a result we are taking swift action,” the post says.
Lokesh also added that the company believes in “freedom of speech, but we certainly don’t have to support hate speech with our advertising dollars.”
UPDATE: 2:15 p.m. — Fox News defended the segment in a statement released Friday, saying that “it is obscene to suggest that Laura Ingraham was defending Paul Nehlen’s despicable actions.”
This story has been updated with statements from Starkist and Fracture.
