David Hogg Rejects Laura Ingraham's Weak Apology

Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg went on CNN Friday morning to make clear that he does NOT accept Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s apology for attacking him and that he still thinks she is full of shit.

To get you briefly up to speed: Ingraham, an adult, mocked Hogg, a kid who just survived a massacre, for being unhappy that he was rejected by several colleges. Hogg then did his part to make Ingraham’s advertisers aware of this. Many of those advertisers decided that, on balance, they’d rather side with the school shooting survivor. Ingraham then apologized to Hogg, though not without including a handy link to his appearance on her show.

That brings us to Friday’s New Day, when host Alisyn Camerota asked Hogg about all of this.

“When people try to distract, like Laura is trying to do right now, from what the real is issue is, which is gun violence in America, it’s not only sad. It’s just wrong,” Hogg told her. “From a journalistic standpoint, I would say that she needs to be more objective and needs to stand down, because I am not the issue here. The issue needs to be gun violence in America, but what she’s trying to do is distract from that and I hate it.”

“Do you accept her apology?” Camerota asked.

“No,” Hogg replied flatly. “She’s only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out and I think it’s really disgusting the fact that she basically tried promoting her show after ‘apologizing’ to me. I think it’s wrong and I think if she really wants to do something she could cover things like inner-city violence and the real issues that we have in America.”

Concise and clear! Apology not accepted. Hogg’s refusal to smooth things over will likely add to the ever-escalating conservative frenzy around him. (Just this morning, a Washington Times writer said that he would have made a good Nazi.) It will also no doubt contribute to the inane debate about whether he and his fellow Parkland survivors are being too “harsh” or “uncivil” in their rhetoric. They’re not! They’re being exactly as respectful toward the NRAs and Marco Rubios and Laura Ingrahams of the world as those cretins deserve, and the attempts to cram their justifiable rage into a tidy box that won’t make anyone too mad should be rejected at every turn.