Report: Silverman Says KNUS Pulled Him Over Trump Criticizism

RADIO ONLINE | Sunday, November 17, 2019

Craig Silverman

Conservative radio host Craig Silverman was abruptly taken off the air in the middle of his show on Saturday at Salem Media Group's KNUS-AM/Denver, reports. Clare Duffy of CNN Business. He was reportedly covering the impeachment hearings and Silverman says the station didn't like his criticism of President Trump. He's hosted the "Craig Silverman Show" on KNUS Saturday mornings for nearly five years.

"I was frustrated that we couldn't talk about the facts of the impeachment case and it all came to a head as I was excoriating Donald Trump on my show yesterday," Silverman told CNN's Brian Stelter on "Reliable Sources" on Sunday.

KNUS has since removed the web page for Silverman's show but says the program has not been canceled, and that the interruption had nothing to do with his politics. However, CNN reports that when Silverman said that while every host makes decisions as to the content of their show, when he would try to discuss it with leaders at the station, "you come into words like 'sham' and 'hoax.'"

"I said, 'that's interesting, (but) you can get plenty of that elsewhere,'" said Silverman. "On my show, we are going to talk about Ukraine and this impeachment hearing and the facts and what the President is saying that doesn't add up."

KNUS VP/GM Brian Taylor told CNN that Silverman's show was not taken off the air because of the impeachment coverage. Instead, it was because he mentioned a recent appearance on a competing station that KNUS had asked him not to speak on, even though Silverman says he is an "independent contractor" for the station.

"We asked Craig to avoid appearing there, since we consider him an important part of KNUS," Taylor said in an email to CNN Business. "He decided it was important for him to appear across town, and said so on his program Saturday. That is what prompted our decision to take him off the air... The notion that he was relieved of his program because he criticized President Trump is absolutely untrue. We have never told Mr. Silverman the position to take on Trump and impeachment."

Salem VP/News and Talk programming Tom Tradeup told CNN Business in an email that the network "has nothing to do with personnel decisions made by individual radio stations ... whether (as in this case) Salem-owned or not."

Taylor added, "nothing has changed" at the moment with the status of Silverman's show. "We need to confirm that Craig has abandoned his intention to be included on competing radio stations while maintaining a featured position here."