“Trump supporters deserve to die more than I do.”
That was the Trump supporter-hating headline of a HuffPost blogpost.
Free Beacon reporter Alex Griswold flagged the blogpost April 21, asking in a tweet “does the Huffington Post have any editorial standards? At all?”
HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen responded to his concerns, tweeting that the HuffPost does and deleted that blogpost “almost immediately after it appeared.”
An archive of the post shows it was published April 13 and was written by Chris Cali, identified as a “writer, artist, musician.” Earlier blogposts attributed to him through his author page list his name as Christian Gabriel. iMediaEthics has asked Cali and the HuffPost which is his real name.
iMediaEthics notes that the HuffPost replaced the offensive blogpost with a notice reading, “This post from the Huffington Post Contributor Platform is no longer available on our site.”
Chris Cali, the author of the post, tweeted that HuffPost “deleted it hours after it was uploaded.” Cali also tried to explain that he wasn’t really saying anyone should die but that he thought they “deserve to die MORE than me.”
Other HuffPost blogposts under Cali’s name include:
- “America could be great, but you’ll be dead by then”
- “FIRE EVERYONE: It’s Time to Clean House in the DNC”
- “It’s 2016: Gay Men need to stop being so basic about Male Sexuality”
- “If you don’t vote Democrat this November, then F**K you.”
He told iMediaEthics by e-mail, “I wrote something intentionally incendiary, satirical & offensive.”
Cali said he wasn’t “surprised” or “bothered” by the unpublishing and didn’t mind that he was suspended as a blogger, since he wasn’t paid or an employee. According to Cali, his blogpost was removed after “less than a few hours.”
“As far as the piece itself, as I expected, the title was seized upon by right wing media, and the actual content was largely ignored or quoted and paraphrased out of context,” Cali told iMediaEthics. “I didn’t actually wish death upon anyone or advocate for anyone to be killed.”
Cali further remarked he intended for his piece to be “in poor taste” and added, “The moral outrage from people who voted for and support a president who has made incendiary racist, sexist, xenophobic and generally bigoted remarks is ironic and significantly lacking in credibility.”
iMediaEthics has written to Cali and the HuffPost to ask which is his real name – Chris Cali or Christian Gabriel.
In another tweet about the case, HuffPost’s Polgreen added that “Our contributor network is an open platform for approved contributors. If the [sic] violate our terms we immediate delete & suspend account.”
Just last week, HuffPost South Africa unpublished a blogpost arguing white men around the world should be banned from voting for twenty years. The post was not unpublished because of its content, but because the author’s identity could not be verified. The site’s editor resigned over the incident.