Ingraham takes a week off amid fallout
Talk show host’s Tweet about Parkland activist caused ad cancellations
MIAMI—The war of words between Fox News talk show host Laura Ingraham and Parkland survivor David Hogg has taken one combatant out of the ring — albeit for just one week.
Amid backlash after publicly ridiculing 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas senior Hogg on his college rejections, Ingraham announced Friday that she was taking a pre-planned break from her TV show for a week following Easter.
A dozen advertisers already pulled ads from “The Ingraham Angle” this week after she Tweeted the student activist. Among them: Liberty Mutual Insurance, Office Depot, Nestle, Joseph A. Banks, Expedia, Hulu, Johnson & Johnson, Nutrish pet foods, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Jenny Craig and the Atlantis Paradise Island resort, SA Today reports.
On Friday evening’s telecast, Ingraham told her viewers, “I’ll be off next week for Easter break with my kids. Fear not, we’ve got a great lineup of guest hosts to fill in for me.”
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed that the vacation was preplanned.
The move is the latest blow to the conservative TV host after Ingraham on Wednesday morning tweeted that Hogg “whines about” being rejected by four universities in California, linking to an article from The Daily Wire calling him a “Gun Rights Provocateur.’’
Hogg said he was accepted at Florida Atlantic University, California Polytechnic University and California State, San Marcos but hasn’t said if he would attend college immediately after high school.
TMZ, which had contacted Hogg to ask him about his university rejections — before the controversy — said Hogg “did the OPPOSITE of whining” when talking about his college choices.
Hogg survived the Feb. 14 massacre at his Parkland school in which 14 students and three faculty members were killed by a former student who came on campus armed with a semiautomatic weapon.
Hogg brands himself a #NeverAgain activist and calls for gun reform laws. He took a shot at Ingraham on Twitter, where he has amassed nearly 700,000 followers. “Have some healthy reflections this Holy Week,” he tweeted.
Ingraham, who had used the platform and her nearly 2.2 million Twitter followers to bait Hogg, issued an apology more than a day later after the student urged the show’s advertisers to pull out and they began responding in kind.