A week after she targeted Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar for wearing a hijab, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was off-air Saturday night, replaced by a rerun documentary series about William Kennedy Smith.
Pirro, a close friend and unwavering supporter of Donald Trump, also has been missing from social media and hasn’t tweeted since last weekend, when she accused Omar on-air of supporting Sharia law.
So far, Fox News won’t publicly say whether Pirro’s show, Justice with Judge Jeanine, one of the network’s top-rated weekend shows, has been permanently canceled or whether Pirro has been temporarily suspended.
“We are not commenting on internal scheduling matters,” Fox News said in a statement Saturday night, according to The New York Times.
The move follows a week in which several advertisers bailed on the show due to Pirro’s bigoted comments, which drew broad condemnation and a rare rebuke from the Fox network.
“She’s not getting this anti-Israel sentiment doctrine from the Democrat Party. So if it’s not rooted in the party, where is she getting it from?” Pirro said of Omar last weekend. “Think about it. Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran 33:59 tells women to cover so they won’t get molested. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
In response, Fox News issued a statement condemning Pirro’s remarks. “We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar. They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly,” Fox said.
Pirro also issued a statement, though she did not apologize. “My intention was to ask a question and start a debate,” Pirro stated, “but of course because one is Muslim does not mean you don’t support the Constitution. I invite Rep. Omar to come on my show any time to discuss all of the important issues facing America today.”
Omar did not accept the invitation.
One of the show’s most avid viewers, Donald Trump, clearly was upset about Fox’s decision. On Sunday, Trump posted a Twitter rant about both Pirro’s and Tucker Carlson’s shows. Carlson, also a Fox News host, is facing his own scandal over misogynistic and racist comments he made a decade ago on a talk radio show. Among those comments, Carlson defended statutory rape and child abuser Warren Jeffs, and called Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” among other things. Carlson also has refused to apologize for his offensive comments, and Fox News hasn’t taken him off-air, despite some advertisers pulling their ads.
Aside from sounding like the mad ravings of a lunatic, Trump’s comments are particularly egregious considering they come less than two days after an Islamophobic, white supremacist terrorist gunned down 100 people during Friday prayers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing at least 50 people and injuring 50 others.
Now the president of the United States is openly defending two well-known racist bigots on his favorite TV network. How far we’ve fallen, folks.