The Untold Truth Of Laura Ingraham

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Conservative firebrand Laura Ingraham is known to her millions of fans on talk radio and Fox News as a sharp-tongued, no-holds-barred critic of American politics. To say she skews to the right is an understatement — she once quoted a comedian who compared liberals to herpes — and she made news for starting a beef with Parkland shooting survivor-turned gun control advocate David Hogg.

After Hogg stated his disbelief that he'd been rejected from four colleges in spite of his strong academic aptitude, Ingraham tweeted a response which many viewed to be a taunt of the activist teen. Hogg then called for an advertising boycott on Ingraham's show, The Ingraham Angle, and many companies pulled support. Ingraham eventually apologized and took what Fox News called a "pre-planned" Easter break. As of this writing, Fox News seems to have to stuck by Ingraham, despite the advertising freefall. So we await Ingraham's next political scuffle, dive into her background; how she rose to the top of the ranks on conservative talk radio; and how she eventually landed a spot on prime-time right wing holy ground at Fox News. This is the untold truth of Laura Ingraham.

Before stoking the fires of partisan politics on the AM band, Laura Ingraham triggered a few controversies back at The Dartmouth Review in the early '80s. According to The New York Times, Ingraham sent a reporter to secretly record a meeting of the Gay Students Association (GSA), then published a partial transcript of the meeting, including the identities of two "association officials." The GSA felt this was a violation of its first amendment rights, since members were required to take "an oath of confidentiality" to attend.

Ingraham later justified the story by saying the publication was simply investigating school funding that the GSA had received — a total of $825 over two years — and that her reporter acted legally under freedom of the press. "It seems they just have parties and talk about parties," Ingraham told UPI, adding, "There isn't a heterosexual group that gets funding." The story gained national attention and became a lightning rod for critics who claimed Ingraham "outed" her fellow students. Ingraham disputed that claim in her 1997 piece for The Washington Post, while also taking responsibility for her past intolerances towards LGBT rights. She said her position on the issue evolved after observing her homosexual brother Curtis' partner's battle with AIDS.

In a bit of an ironic twist, Laura Ingraham once called for an advertiser boycott like the one she faced from student activist David Hogg. Ingraham flexed her considerable weight against Verizon over its sponsorship of a 2007 concert tour featuring rapper Akon. Why? The "Smack That" rapper was in the hot seat over an "explicit dance" he performed with a 14-year old girl during a show in Trinidad. Though hers was far from the only conservative criticism of Akon, Ingraham's influence is what moved Verizon to pull its sponsorship from the tour on which Akon was a "supporting act," according to Reuters. The telecom giant did not specifically cite the Akon controversy as the reason it pulled out of the tour, but a source told Reuters, "Verizon received a lot of calls from Laura Ingraham fans and Verizon caved."

Ingraham didn't have any problems claiming credit for the advertising scalp. According to the conservative blog Hot Air she later appeared on Your World with Neil Cavuto and "slammed Akon for mainstreaming utter vile filth." She also thanked others who had rallied against him, as well as "her listeners for getting Verizon to drop the convicted rapper." 

If you thought all past and present Fox News hosts were automatically on the same side, think again. There doesn't even seem to be a shared bond of sisterhood between former colleague Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham, despite the many reasons working in the same troubled newsroom could have forged one. But for Ingraham especially, there was no love lost when Kelly defected to NBC News. In her October 2017 interview with The New York Times, Ingraham swiped at Kelly's now-defunct nine o'clock hour on Today with a rather unflattering comparison."What do you think? We're going to have a stove in the back, and we're going to have popovers?" She said of Kelly's "softened on-air persona," adding, "No. I won't be doing that."

On-air, Ingraham has come for Kelly a few times, referencing the flagging ratings of Kelly's morning show and mocking her segment featuring women who have accused President Trump of sexual harassment and assault. Ingraham also tweeted a Variety story that pondered NBC's controversial hiring of Kelly with the question, "Did NBC make a $17.5m mistake?" Yeesh. Shots have not only been fired here, but full-on war has been waged, even if only one side seems to be fighting.

For decades, Laura Ingraham has given more than her two cents on the American political process, and there may come a day when she decides to get off the sidelines. Speaking with The Sunday Times (via Real Clear Politics) in 2013, Ingraham said that she's "been approached by various people to get involved" and that she was "keeping an open mind about running for office in the future."

Fast forward four years, and Ingraham's plans had not yet solidified, although she seemed to have narrowed her sights on a branch of government to try to infiltrate: the legislature. Specifically, Ingraham was eyeballing the seat occupied by Tim Kane, the junior senator from Virginia, who also ran for vice president alongside Hillary Clinton.

In an echo of her remarks from 2013, Ingraham once again said that she'd been encouraged to run by some "well connected" Virginians, which she found "very flattering," although she had yet to make up her mind on whether to do so, according to CNN. A few months later, The Washington Post all but ruled out the possibility of Ingraham joining the 2018 race, but we wouldn't discount the notion that the extremely popular pundit who President Trump considered to be his press secretary has given up her political aspirations just yet.

Laura Ingraham started The Adopt a New Attitude Project in response to the Russian government's retaliatory 2012 ban of all adoptions to the United States. According to The Washington Free Beacon, the former Soviet state's harsh restriction was a reaction to U.S. economic sanctions, and it resulted in the immediate stoppage of any further adoptions of Russian children to American families, including more than 300 adoptions who were already somewhere in the process.

Referring to adopted children as "little angels" that "need us," Ingraham told The Free Beacon, "I didn't really think all that much about adoption until I adopted," but she found her passion for the cause after adopting three children of her own — two boys from Russia and a girl from Guatemala. She said she hopes Adopt a New Attitude reveals to the public what the "great light of adoption [is]." Granted, this isn't necessarily an "untold truth," given that Ingraham literally created a very public organization to bring awareness to a cause, but in January 2017, Russian officials signalled that they were "ready for dialogue" on the issue, and that there was potential for "everything" to be "changed back" to how conditions were prior to the ban. If Ingraham's initiative had even the slightest impact on that turnaround, it's something that deserves some attention.

Clearly, Laura Ingraham is no fan of liberal teen activists. But she may have saved arguably her worst attack for Greta Thunberg, the teen climate change activist and Time's 2019 Person of the Year, who "inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike ... in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history."

Ingraham was apparently unimpressed by the achievement. During an episode of The Ingraham Angle that aired three days after the historic worldwide protest, the conservative host compared Thunberg to the fictional teen cult in Stephen King's classic Children of the Corn. "The adults who've brainwashed these kids should be brought up on charges of child abuse," Ingraham said (via The Washington Post). "Does anyone else find that chilling?" she added, "I can't wait for Stephen King's sequel, Children of the Climate." Yikes.

Predictably, she faced instant backlash over her comments, the harshest of which came from her brother, Curtis Ingraham. While that sounds shocking, keep in mind Curtis had previously called Laura "a monster," and publicly shamed advertisers on her show. After Laura's Thunberg slam, Curtis headed to Twitter and didn't hold back. "Clearly my sister's paycheck is more important than the world her three adopted kids will inherit," he wrote. "I can no longer apologize for a sibling who I no longer recognize. I can and will continue to call out the monstrous behavior and the bully commentary born out of anger." We assume Thanksgiving is fun for their family members.