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”:

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.”