The Anthony Cumia non-apology tour landed at the late-night satirical talk show Red Eye on FNC in the shock jock’s first TV appearance since he lost his radio gig.
Satellite radio provider SiriusXM last week fired the outspoken Cumia , the co-host of the Opie & Anthony Show , after a racist and obscenity filled Twitter rant following what he claims was a mugging. The tweets have since been deleted.
In a statement, SiriusXM said that “SiriusXM has terminated its relationship with Anthony Cumia of the Opie & Anthony channel. The decision was made, and Cumia informed, late Thursday, July 3 after careful consideration of his racially-charged and hate-filled remarks on social media. Those remarks and postings are abhorrent to SiriusXM, and his behavior is wholly inconsistent with what SiriusXM represents.”
With Anthony Cumia on the panel, Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld opened the show (see embed below) with a swerve, i.e., a brief and boring discussion of the federal deficit, and then quipped “Who we kidding? Let’s address the elephant in the room, the racist elephant.”
In defense of what went down on social media, Anthony Cumia told the Red Eye panel that he was in Times Square taking photographs at 4 am when an altercation with a woman occurred. He admitted that in retrospect that he should have cooled off first before sending out the tweets. “I defy anyone to be that angry, especially after an assault, and come off reasonable,” he added.
Under questioning from panelist Andy Levy, Cumia insisted his tweets weren’t racist. “I was talking about people [who] instantly go to violence … I walked down the street. She called me a white m—-r f—-r and started punching me in the face … so I addressed her and others [who] act like that.”
Cumia also said that SiriusXM acted in a hypocritical fashion in terminating him because he’s been engaging in the same freewheeling commentary and earthy language on the radio network for 10 years. “To fire me for something on social media is kind of hypocritical, I think. There wasn’t even any outrage. No one approached SiriusXM and said ‘Oh my God, you’ve got to fire him.’ It was such a kneejerk reaction in this day and age …”
Levy pointed out that many Twitter users may have been unfamiliar with his radio show and were just reading the tweets in isolation.
In response to why he never called 911, Cuma said, “I’m not going to use up the police resources in the pinnacle of the free world to say that a girl hit me.” The woman in question has yet to come forward.
Restating his version of events, Cumia explained that he was merely taking pictures in Time Square on a beautiful night “and I got punched in the face by a woman whose first words after she heard the shutter click was a racist comment — white m—-r f—–r … why am I the guy who has to be the kind of person that doesn’t want to insult the person who is assaulting me?”
Cumia added that he would never offer up an apology for his social media rant, even if it would mean reinstatement by SiriusXM:
I will never apologize for this… I didn’t do anything wrong … this is exactly who I am. I am not even going to deny it. I go off on tears like this. I curse, I say horrific things about people who piss me off, and that’s exactly what I did. Why am I going to apologize and say I’m different or I changed? I haven’t. It would be a phony bogus apology … if it happened again, I would do the same thing.”
Anthony Cumia is launching a podcast starting August 4. Opie is likely to continue broadcasting Opie without Anthony with show fixture and popular comic Jim Norton taking over the co-hosting duties.
Watch the Anthony Cumia interview and draw your own conclusions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cQRUi1YUuQ