Media figures are calling on CNN to fire panelist Scott Jennings after the conservative commentator told a fellow on-air guest on Thursday to “get your f***ing hand out of my face.”
“At any other network, in any other era of television news, uttering an impromptu F-bomb would be a fireable offense,” former CNN anchor Jim Acosta wrote on his Substack.
Acosta added that he remembered Jennings as a “hothead” from their time working together, traits the former anchor argued were on display when Jennings lashed out on Thursday at panelist Adam Mockler, 23, a reporter and YouTuber with the progressive MeidasTouch network.
As Mockler and Jennings debated the low popularity of the Iran war, Mockler claimed Jennings was once again backing an “endless war,” after serving in the George W. Bush administration during the time of the Iraq war. Tensions rose as the pair went back and forth, speaking over each other and gesticulating near each other’s faces.
“Get your f***ing hand out of my face, first of all,” Jennings eventually said.
“Lighten up, Scott!” Acosta added of the exchange. “Mockler is almost a kid. And a nice one at that. Either way, Jennings should be fired.”
Political commentator Keith Boykin had a similar take.
“I’ve been on the air with Scott many times over the years,” Boykin wrote on Threads. “He is a paid CNN contributor. I’m not. Telling a fellow panelist to ‘get your f***ing hand out of my face’ is unacceptable…When I was under contract with CNN, I was told that contributors serve as ‘brand ambassadors.’ Is this the brand?”
The Independent has contacted Jennings and CNN for comment.
Mockler, in a YouTube video after the Thursday segment aired, accused Jennings of intentionally provoking conflict and picking on guests but not having the stomach to weather criticism himself.
“If you can’t take the heat, then get the hell out of the kitchen,” Mockler said.
Jennings, who regularly fills the pro-Trump chair on CNN panels, has reliably earned the outrage of liberal media figures.
In a 2025 monologue arguing that President Trump and his allies were unduly influencing media coverage, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell singled out Jennings.
“Now CNN eagerly pays a Trump supporter to lie on CNN every day and night for Donald Trump,” O’Donnell said.
Behind the scenes, however, Jennings is known to criticize Trump, according to Miles Taylor, former Homeland Security Department chief of staff under Trump.
“You know who’s a perfect metaphor for the GOP? Scott Jennings,” Taylor wrote on X in March. “A pundit who mocks Trump with us during commercial breaks — but fawns over Trump when the camera is rolling. Brave enough to speak out… in the green room.”
During the second Trump administration, there have been multiple large pushes from conservatives to fire a major media figure as well, both involving late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
Republicans have sought to get Kimmel off the air first for comments about Charlie Kirk in 2025 and then more recently for a joke about the first lady looking like an “expectant widow” that was told a few days before the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
The Trump administration has gamely joined these pile-ons, which critics say is an alarming sign for media freedom.
Behind the scenes, Trump allies have consolidated their control over major U.S. media forces with the blessing of the administration, including via the U.S. takeover of TikTok’s American operations, as well as the recent Paramount Skydance merger and Paramount’s nearly-complete buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery, parent company to CNN.
