‘Not appropriate’: Fox abruptly ends interview after guest likens Hillary Clinton to chronic disease

Turning Point USA’s Anna Paulina was unceremoniously booted from a live interview on Fox News after she made disparaging comments about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“She won’t go away,” Paulina said of the twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate in an interview on Thanksgiving morning with Fox News senior correspondent Rick Leventhal. “She’s like herpes.”

Leventhal quickly condemned the statement, saying sarcastically on air: “Okay, that’s news that we’re breaking here,” and adding Paulina’s comment was “not appropriate.” Watch the tension-filled exchange unfold:

Ill-humored snub

To be fair, Paulina was a bit flustered in her interview by the time she made the comments about the former first lady. When Leventhal asked his guest about calls from the Trump administration to prosecute Clinton, Pauliana began reciting a monologue about border control that seemed oddly out of place.

“I’d have to say, with everything that happened with President Trump and the border, you know the [unintelligible] Act of 1903 established the ability of the president to federalize the National Guard and basically call forth the National Guard in times of crisis and national emergency,” Paulina began, apparently thinking she was on air to discuss the situation at the southern border, no doubt on account of her role as Turning Point USA’s director of Hispanic engagement. 

“I thought we were talking about Hillary’s emails,” Leventhal said, interrupting. “But we could get to the border.”

Paulina appeared genuinely conciliatory, and though she tried to apologize and explain the mistake, producers cut her audio mid-sentence. Leventhal deferred to his other guest, political analyst Doug Schoen, who said he completely supported “starting a Clinton investigation.”

“I am amazed that with everything going on in the world, we still have Hillary Clinton in the headlines,” Leventhal answered before asking his Turning Points guest how she felt about the subject.

“She won’t go away,” Paulina answered, smiling. “She’s like herpes.”

On-knee apology

Paulina may have borrowed the joke from conservative actor Tim Allen, who told The Hollywood Reporter during the 2016 presidential campaign that “the Clintons are like herpes. Just when you think they’re gone, they show up again.”

After apologizing a first time for the on-air insult, Leventhal condemned the statement a second time.

“We are going to wrap this segment a little bit early because of the language that was used in the segment, and we apologize to our viewers for that,” he said. But if booting their guest and offering multiple apologies weren’t enough, Leventhal’s co-host took a moment to personally apologize to Clinton on behalf of the cable news outlet.

“We want to reiterate that we do not condone the language that Anna Paulina just displayed here, and we apologize to Secretary Clinton for that,” Fox News anchor Arthel Neville said. “Fox News does not condone her sentiments.”

Meanwhile, at CNN…

Meanwhile, liberal news outlets like CNN have refused to offer any apologies when their own anchors use vulgarity. Bill Weir, for example, referred to Fox News as “willfully ignorant f***sticks” on social media when the conservative outlet tweeted a story poking fun at climate change alarmists, and CNN didn’t even ask their employee to delete the tweet.

And when former Democratic Congressman Bakari Sellers said that “Kanye West is what happens when negroes don’t read” in response to CNN contributor Tara Setmeyer calling him an “attention whore” and “the token negro of the Trump administration,” CNN anchor Don Lemon simply chuckled on air; the network never even issued an apology.