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CBS fires executive who said she was 'not even sympathetic' to Las Vegas victims because
they were most likely Republican gun owners CBS on Monday fired an executive on its legal
team after she wrote on Facebook about how she did not care about the victims of a mass
shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival because they were most likely Republican and
owned guns.
Hayley Geftman-Gold, a vice president in the strategic transactions department at CBS,
appeared to reference the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 in
a Facebook comment earlier Monday. She said she had little faith that Congress would act
on gun-control legislation because Republicans didn't support a background-check bill following
that shooting, in which 20 children were killed.
She also wrote that she was not sympathetic to the victims of the shooting in Las Vegas
on Sunday — in which at least 59 people were killed and 527 were injured — because,
she said, country music fans are often Republicans and own guns.
"If they wouldn't do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that the Repugs
will ever do the right thing," she wrote. "I'm actually not even sympathetic bc country
music fans often are republican gun toters."
CBS announced in a statement that it had fired Geftman-Gold, who had made her Twitter account
private by midday.
"This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company,
and is no longer an employee of CBS," a representative said. "Her views as expressed on social media
are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas
and their families."
Geftman-Gold's comments sparked widespread condemnation. They also quickly became a talking
point on the right, as many commentators and pundits used her words as an example of media
bias against Republicans and gun owners.
In a rant against politicizing shootings, the Fox News host Sean Hannity mentioned the
executive's departure to his radio audience. The story got top billing on Fox News' website
and the far-right news site Breitbart.
Geftman-Gold did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.