After a skirmish with a black woman near Times Square, Sirius XM radio host Anthony Cumia 
went on a full fledged rant, saying cities are a “jungle after midnight” because of “savages” like the woman he’d just fought with. During his Twitter rant, Cumia lashed out not only at the woman with whom he’d had issues, but people living mostly black urban communities as well. Although the comments ended with Cumia being fired, he insists that they were not racist.
During an episode of Fox News’ Red Eye, host Greg Gutfeld jokingly asked Cumia whether his Twitter account had been hacked. Cumia admitted that the tweets were his, then defended himself by saying, “If you read those — honestly people picked it apart. It wasn’t racist.”
Cumia said he was “talking about people that instantly go to viοlence” and when he spoke of “savages” and “animals”, he was referring only to viοlent black people, not all black people.
Cumia also took issue with being fired for his rant.
“To fire me for something on social media is kind of hypocritical, I think,” Cumia said. “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.”
Sirius spokesman Patrick Reilly was very clear on why Cumia was let go.
“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,” Reilly stated. “Those remarks and postings are abhorrent to SiriusXM, and his behavior is wholly inconsistent with what SiriusXM represents.”
