The Spectator’s Washington editor and former Daily Caller reporter Amber Athey called out Cumulus Media, the parent company of radio station WMAL, for firing her over a series of tweets Tuesday.
Athey, a former “O’Connor & Company” co-host, was fired by the company’s vice president, Jeff Boden, and vice president of human resources, Kriston Fancellas, on March 9 after receiving waves of backlash from left-wing activists over a tweet that mocked Vice President Kamala Harris’ pantsuit.
“I wish that there was more to this story because this is so infuriating, but I have a termination letter that lays out in very specific detail that it was in fact this tweet about Kamala Harris’ outfit, and I think what happened here is that Cumulus thought … that they could just make this all go away, they could get these few activists emails, they could appease the mob if they just fired me,” she said. “Well, the first mistake is that the woke mob is never satisfied. They always want more scalps.”
“I believe very deeply that we are all obligated to speak out when injustices occur in our society,” she continued.
Athey said “we live in a very perverse and sick society” that allows for the Vice President of the United States to be the “marginalized victim” over a woman with a working-class background.
“Did they explain how it was racist that you weren’t impressed by her outfit? Did they get specific or did they just call you names and fire you?” Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson asked. (RELATED: Conservative Radio Hosts Speak Out After Activists Get Colleague Fired)
“No, they just called me names and fired me, and I tried to defend myself but wasn’t really offered the opportunity, and I’m told that in subsequent meetings about this situation, they actually admitted that they didn’t really think that the tweet was racist,” Athey said. “What really mattered to them was the perception of it being racist by these really bad-faith, dishonest, left-wing actors.”
After Athey sent the tweet about Harris, left-wing activists pointed to that tweet and subsequent posts in which she criticized protesters at the University of North Texas for being in favor of sex reassignment surgery for minors. The protests were held in opposition to speaker Jeff Younger, a father whose ex-wife insisted his son was a girl and should transition.
Athey detailed her firing in a Monday article for the Spectator, who said her termination “has destroyed the integrity and reputation of WMAL and Cumulus as hosts of conservative content.”
“It shows their racist intent. These are people who think about everything in terms of race. Nobody on the show knew this was going to happen,” Athey told the Daily Caller earlier Tuesday. “They only use this as a tool. People who claim to care about bigotry are only using it as a weapon and are using it to silence people they disagree with politically.”
WMAL radio hosts opposed the company’s decision to fire her, calling it “out of control” and a “horrible mistake” on their Tuesday shows.