The Atlantic Caves to Democrats and Fires Kevin Williamson Over Old Comments About Abortion

The Atlantic has caved to relentless pressure from the left to fire “Never-Trump” conservative writer Kevin Williamson after the Democrats at Media Matters dug up an old podcast in which he stated that women who have abortions should face the death penalty.

The left has been trying to get Williamson fired since his new position was announced last month, even though he shares their anti-Trump sentiments. They have previously pointed to tweets where he stated that abortion should be treated like “any other homicide.”

“And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, ‘If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.’ And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging,” Williamson said on his podcast in 2014. “But yeah, so when I was talking about, I would totally go with treating it like any other crime up to and including hanging — which kind of, as I said, I’m kind of squishy about capital punishment in general, but I’ve got a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment. I tend to think that things like lethal injection are a little too antiseptic….quasi-medical — yeah, if the state is going to do violence, let’s make it violence….Let’s not pretend like we’re doing something else.”

Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced Williamson’s firing in a staff memo on Thursday.

“The language he used in this podcast — and in my conversations with him in recent days — made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views,” Goldberg wrote in the memo, according to a report from The Hill. “The tweet was not merely an impulsive, decontextualized, heat-of-the-moment post, as Kevin had explained it. Furthermore, the language used in the podcast was callous and violent. This runs contrary to The Atlantic’s tradition of respectful, well-reasoned debate, and to the values of our workplace.”

Goldberg had previously defended his hiring of the former National Review writer by saying that he likes to “give people second chances and the opportunity to change.”

Apparently, while pretending to allow ideological differences at their outlet, believing that abortion is murder is out of the question — even if you do hate our president.

 

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