“Did I miss anything while I was gone?” Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked at the top of her Monday night show. “I’m glad I don’t have a Google alert for my name.”
Ingraham returned to her show, The Ingraham Angle, Monday after a week-long hiatus. Her “Easter break” suspiciously coincided with a mass exodus of advertisers from her program following comments Ingraham made about Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, mocking him for not getting accepted into some University of California colleges. She did not mention whether the break was planned in advance or in response to the all the negative press she received that week.
Now that Ingraham is back is on television, she is showing little to no remorse.
She started off her Monday show with an extended monologue about the perils of “squelching” free speech.
“The left’s propaganda shaped a new generation of young adults, who then parroted all that malarkey about the ‘patriarchy,’ and then they came up with their own new phrases like ‘micro-aggressions’ and ‘safe spaces’ and ‘white privilege,’” Ingraham said. “Today, left-wing activists use these terms as bludgeons to intimidate those who disagree with them from entering the dialogue at all.”
“Their efforts are Stalinist, pure and simple,” she added. “Their objective is a total transformation of American society, not through rational discourse and open debate, but through personal demonization and silencing.”
As it turns out, over a dozen advertisers didn’t like being associated with a TV host who harangued a kid for not getting into college, and are still continuing to drop her show.
Slimfast has become the 21st advertiser to dump @IngrahamAngle after she calls David Hogg and fellow boycotters "Stalinist." Thank you @SlimFast.#BoycottIngrahamAdvertisers https://t.co/OBaHDPyoCh
— (((STOP))) tRumpnado (@Trumpnado2016) April 10, 2018
Liberty Mutual, one of Ingraham’s top advertisers, called the Fox News host’s comments “inconsistent with our values as a company.”
The following message was issued earlier today to employees of Liberty Mutual Insurance by David Long, Chairman and CEO: pic.twitter.com/FVyIBZrnC0
— Liberty Mutual (@LibertyMutual) March 30, 2018
Atlantis Paradise Island Resort said in a statement that while the company believes in free speech, they also “do not condone discrimination, bullying, mockery or harmful behavior of any kind.”
Companies announcing that they have dropped advertisements from her show include Nutrish, TripAdviser, Wayfair, Expedia, Nestlé, Stich Fix, Hulu, Jenny Craig, Office Depot, Honda, Miracle-Ear, Liberty Mutual, Principal Financial Group, Ruby Tuesday, Entertainment Studios, and Johnson & Johnson.
According to a recent consumer poll by YouGov BrandIndex, boycotting Laura Ingraham’s program is no big deal for advertisers.
Advertisers boycotting Laura Ingraham appear unscathed, while Fox News sees perception decline. Nine of them show negligible movement in their Buzz score. This indicates consumers are not swayed positively or negatively toward their actions so far https://t.co/2wKS3ftKQR pic.twitter.com/SCsbhAw4tk
— YouGovUS (@YouGovUS) April 2, 2018
Data shows that Fox News, not advertisers, are hurting the most from the Laura Ingraham boycott.