Imus to MSNBC President for Not Firing Bashir: 'Come on, Man!'

On Thursday, Don Imus, whom MSNBC fired in 2007 after he referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy headed hos” on the network, said he could not believe MSNBC President Phil Griffin is going to keep Martin Bashir on the air after he suggested someone should urinate or defecate in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s mouth. 

Imus, on Imus in the Morning on Fox Business Network, said it was unbelievable that MSNBC President Phil Griffin has not fired Bashir.

“They are going to keep him on the air?” Imus said. “Come on, man. What are you, nuts?

Imus later said, “I don’t know how he still has a job” and noted that though Imus is “fairly liberal,” he felt what Bashir said about Palin was “the worst” type of rhetoric. 

MSNBC fired Imus a week after he made his remarks in April 2007, but has not taken any action against Bashir. Back in 2007, Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama said Imus should be fired and MSNBC should not tolerate such “hateful” rhetoric that adds to the “coarsening” of the culture. Obama said such rhetoric made his daughters feel less than anybody else, but Obama has not commented on Bashir’s violent rhetoric against females. Bashir apologized on Monday and conceded his words were “wholly inappropriate” and “offensive.”

Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC, wrote a letter to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Deborah Turness, which Breitbart News exclusively obtained, and asked how Bashir would be disciplined given the actions the network has taken in the past with hosts deemed to have made “offensive” remarks.

“You fired Don Imus for offensive language in describing the Rutgers University Women’s Basketball team, you suspended Alec Baldwin, and yet nothing has happened to Mr. Bashir,” the letter reads. “Are we to assume then, that disciplinary procedures at your network take place based on the target of the remarks rather than the remarks themselves?”

MSNBC suspended Baldwin last week after he made anti-gay comments at a photographer on the streets of New York. After noting that “Baldwin’s anti-gay slur was not uttered while he was on the air on your network, but Mr. Bashir’s violent rhetoric was,” the letter concludes by saying, “Americans deserve to know that your network doesn’t condone violent and hateful rhetoric directed at anyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or political persuasion.”