Updated at 9:25 a.m.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham capped a tumultuous week, during which a feud with a Parkland, Fla., shooting survivor led to an exodus of advertisers, by announcing at the end of her show Friday that she would be taking next week off for Easter.
“I’ll be off next week for Easter break with my kids, but fear not. We’ve got a great lineup of guest hosts to fill in for me,” Ingraham said in signing off. She made no mention of David Hogg, the senior from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with whom she had engaged in a war of words earlier in the week.
BREAKING: Laura Ingraham announced on tonight’s show that she would take next week off and be replaced by “a great lineup of guest hosts” pic.twitter.com/Ucoa4D45O2
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) March 31, 2018
But Hogg did have a message for Ingraham. “Have some healthy reflections this Holy Week,” he said in response to a video of her sign-off on Twitter.
Have some healthy reflections this Holy Week. https://t.co/bjSLmj3gyH
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 31, 2018
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Ingraham’s week off was pre-planned.
More than a dozen advertisers have either pulled their support or have distanced themselves from Ingraham and her show over the past couple days, spurred on by Hogg, since the deadly shooting at his high school last month he has become a leading voice calling for more stringent gun restrictions.
He rallied support from his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers for a boycott of Ingraham’s advertisers after she mocked Hogg on Wednesday for getting rejected by multiple California universities.
Amid the backlash, and with advertisers starting to give way, Ingraham offered an apology. “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland,” she wrote in one tweet.
However, Hogg refused to accept until she offered a bigger gesture that would include denouncing Fox News. “I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children,” Hogg tweeted Thursday.
By the end of this week, Ingraham’s show, “The Ingraham Angle,” had lost several sponsors, including Expedia, Hulu, Nestle and TripAdvisor.
Joe Peyronnin, a former president of Fox News, told The Wrap that Ingraham’s apology was “inadequate so far” and that if she doesn’t stem the tide of departing advertisers, the result “could be fatal for sure.”
