Breitbart News published, and then took down, a post bashing its former editor-at large, Ben Shapiro, who stepped down last night over the outlet’s handling of allegations that a Donald Trump campaign staffer assaulted reporter Michelle Fields.
The now-deleted post, which was first reported by Gawker, was titled “Ben Shapiro Betrays Loyal Breitbart Readers In Pursuit of Fox News Contributorship.” The screed bashes Shapiro and Buzzfeed, the site that he spoke to regarding his decision to step down.
“Former Breitbart News editor-at-large Ben Shapiro announced Sunday evening via left-wing Buzzfeed that he is abandoning Andrew Breitbart’s lifelong best friend, widow, hand-picked management team and friends in pursuit of an elusive contributorship at the Fox News Channel,” the post begins.
It goes on to say that Shapiro “violated virtually every clause in his employment contract” by appearing on ‘The Kelly File” last week.
“It was business as usual for the ambitious conservative gadfly, who is known to live on the edge, courting and then leaving a series of companies over the past several years,” the article says.
The post called Buzzfeed “a site that has been aiming to destroy Breitbart News since the moment Andrew Breitbart died.”
Breitbart News senior management also issued a sarcastic short statement: “Ben’s listicles will be missed.”
Shapiro and Fields resigned from the conservative site after both felt the site chose to defend Trump over its own reporter following an incident in which Fields said she was forcibly grabbed by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and nearly forced to the ground.
Breitbart’s editor-at-large Joel Pollak told Politico that he wrote the article.
“The article was written by me as part of an effort to make light of a significant company event, and was published as a result of a misunderstanding without going through the normal editorial channels,” Pollak said. “I apologize to Michelle Fields, my friend Ben Shapiro, and to everyone concerned.”
Read the entire deleted post here.