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A commentator at a Sinclair-owned St. Louis station tweeted that he wanted to assault the young gun control activiist with a "hot poker."
A conservative commentator on a St. Louis TV station has resigned after becoming the subject of outrage for a tweet in which he laid out plans to sexually assault gun control activist David Hogg with a red-hot poker.
"I've been hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg's ass tomorrow," Jamie Allman tweeted March 26, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The tweet, now blocked, started getting attention on social media last week, according to the paper, which notes, "The context for his comment was unclear."
Many activists were enraged by it, and advertisers including Ruth's Chris Steakhouse as well as local real estate and health care companies said they would no longer buy time on Allman's programs -- a nightly show called The Allman Report on TV station KDNL and a morning program on conservative talk radio station KFTK. Today, Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns KDNL, announced it had accepted Allman's resignation and would no longer air The Allman Report, The Washington Post reports.
"It represented the potential of yet another public relations crisis for Sinclair, which has come under harsh criticism in recent weeks after a video of dozens of its anchors reading the same mandated script about 'fake stories' went viral," the Post notes. Sinclair has been accused of "injecting what many feel is a conservative bias into local news coverage," the paper continues.
Hogg, 17, is a survivor of the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and he has become an outspoken activist for gun control. He has also become someone conservative pundits love to hate. Laura Ingraham, host of The Ingraham Angle on the Fox News Channel, saw an advertiser backlash after she tweeted that Hogg "was rejected by four colleges to which he applied and whines about it." She later issued an apology of sorts.
But "compared to Ingraham's remark, Allman's statement, with the overt threat of sexualized violence, was an attack of a different magnitude, though he is not a national media figure like Ingraham," the Post notes. Allman is known around St. Louis for his conservative views, often supporting Donald Trump and excoriating liberals.
Allman did not respond to the Post-Dispatch's request for comment on the matter, and his Twitter account has been locked so that users need his permission to view it. It was unclear if his radio program would continue; The Washington Post requested comment from KFTK management, but no response had come at press time.
