Former NRATV host: "It seemed like Wayne LaPierre was going to be out like any week now"

A former host at the scandal-plagued National Rifle Association’s now-defunct media outlet said that during his time working at NRATV, it appeared that NRA Executive Vice President “Wayne LaPierre was going to be out like any week now.”

The NRA and its former advertising agency, Ackerman McQueen, are now suing each other for millions of dollars, and the ad agency has terminated its nearly four-decade-long partnership with the gun group, shuttering NRATV. The NRA has since suffered multiple allegations of financial mismanagement, mainly directed at LaPierre, who reportedly had Ackerman McQueen bill the NRA for private jet travel and designer suits, and even attempted to use the NRA to purchase a multimillion-dollar mansion for his family following the Parkland, FL, school shooting.

In an August 23 video for his website, former NRATV Hot Mic host Bill Whittle said that while he was working with the organization in 2017, it appeared that LaPierre “was going to be out like any week now,” adding that the new management “seemed really fresh and had some good ideas.” Discussing the attempt to buy “a $5 million house” for LaPierre, Whittle said that “the optics are terrible” because “that’s a lot of membership money”:

From the August 23 edition of billwhittle.com's Right Angle

BILL WHITTLE (CO-HOST): I just would like to stress as clearly as possible: These are just my personal comments, I no longer represent the NRA in any way. But I do remember when I was working there a couple years ago, it seemed like Wayne LaPierre was going to be out like any week now and that new management was going to take over. I got a chance to talk to some of the people who looked like they’d be moving up and they seemed really fresh and had some good ideas. And like I say, it’s two or three years later. You cannot run a nonprofit organization and have a $5 million house. I’m not saying it can’t be done, he’s obviously done it. And I’m not even saying he doesn’t deserve it. I’m just saying that you can’t do it -- the optics are terrible. And you know people tend to sneer at this term optics like it’s some kind of fake thing, you know, just kind of a window dressing and -- no, optics really means this just looks bad. And it does look bad. And I know that if you’re a dues-paying member of the National Rifle Association, you’d like to think your money was going to things like, you know, congressional influence and safety programs and all of the rest of it and not a $5 million house. That’s a lot of membership money, a lot.

During his time as an NRATV commentator and host of Hot Mic, Whittle repeatedly made racist remarks, including his claims that “Barack Obama’s presidency set race relations back 100 years in this country” and that “90% or more of the racial problems that we have in this country are manufactured by the left.” NRATV did not pick up Hot Mic for a second season -- its final episode aired September 14, 2017, and Whittle confirmed he was no longer working for NRATV on September 29, 2017.

In 2016, Whittle appeared on white supremacist Stefan Molyneux’s webshow to promote scientific racism and claim that races can be divided along the lines of “civilized man” and “barbarian.”

Former NRATV host: “It seemed like Wayne LaPierre was going to be out like any week now”

On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone discusses how Trump's actions against Rupert Murdoch and the WSJ are “a way to try to put a cap on this broken sewer pipe”

Right-wing media lash out at “The Dignity Act,” a bipartisan immigration bill, and attack its GOP co-sponsor

On MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone points out that “there is no single center of gravity in the larger MAGA media”

MSNBC and CNN out the Trump administration for fueling weather manipulation conspiracy theories

Fox anchor Shannon Bream responds to possible release of Epstein grand jury testimony: “That's just going to be a sliver of what's available when it comes to Epstein evidence”

NRATV