Louisiana's largest business group distances itself from Laura Ingraham's remarks
Louisiana's largest business organization tried to distance itself from controversial remarks made by Laura Ingraham, a conservative political talk show radio host and Fox News personality known for her inflammatory commentary, during the group's annual meeting in Baton Rouge Thursday (Feb. 8).
The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry picked Ingraham, who's close to President Donald Trump, to be its keynote speaker at its annual luncheon that draws hundreds of Louisiana's top business and political leaders. But a few hours after the speech ended, LABI sent out a statement trying to disassociate itself from her remarks.
"Ingraham ... expressed her views on several national social and political issues, some of which are not reflective of the opinions held by the diverse membership of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry," read the statement. "LABI has a long history of listening to all perspectives in a bipartisan manner to develop solutions to Louisiana's challenges."
In her speech, Ingraham touched on several topics that LABI, the most powerful business group in the state, promotes. She championed deregulation and blasted trial lawyers for stifling business, common talking points that LABI also makes.
But Ingraham also derided national and local political figures she didn't like as well as social causes she perceived to be silly. She blasted New Orleans' decision to take down Confederate monuments on public property last year and defended Confederate General Robert E. Lee as an honorable man. At one point, Ingraham said "a rope shouldn't have been put around" the neck of Lee's statue in New Orleans when it was taken down.
As the logos of Louisiana's largest employers -- including Dow Chemical and Cajun Industries -- were projected onto the walls on either side of her, Ingraham also made fun of the
#MeToo social media campaign, which is drawing attention to the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Ingraham also made at least two jokes at the expense of New Orleans Mayor
Mitch Landrieu, and she described former Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton supporters as women in "tie-dyed shirts and floppy skirts."
Other targets in her speech were national figures such as television personality Megyn Kelly, Arizona Sen. John McCain, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former Republican president George W. Bush and the FBI, which she is unhappy with for trying to investigate Trump's ties to Russia.
Ingraham closed her speech by suggesting she might buy property in Louisiana and run for governor of the state, an especially awkward comment because Gov.
John Bel Edwards had also talked at the luncheon and was still sitting in the crowd during her remarks. Ingraham has been rumored to be considering running for a statewide office in her home state of Virginia too.
LABI's president Stephen Waguespack is considering a run for governor against Edwards in 2019. Prior to running LABI, he was the chief of staff for former Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican.
When she finished talking, about two dozen people got up to give her a standing ovation, but well over a hundred others stayed in their seats. LABI then quickly sent out their statement claiming that they didn't agree with all Ingraham had said once the event wrapped up.
That Ingraham made such provocative statements shouldn't have come as a surprise to LABI. She's known to be a verbal bomb-thrower with nationalist views that closely align to those of Steve Bannon, Trump's former political strategist who also ran the right-wing site Breitbart News. She goes out of her way to make comments that offend Democrats and less conservative Republicans.
Waguespack conducted a public question-and-answer session with Ingraham after her speech. He declined to personally comment on Ingraham's remarks, including what specifically LABI might have found troubling about her speech.
LABI also won't say how Ingraham was chosen as the event's keynote speaker and how much she might have been paid to deliver her speech. Ingraham said she was flown to Louisiana on a private plane owned by Cajun Industries. Its founder, Lane Grigsby, is a major Republican donor in Louisiana and heavily involved in LABI.
This isn't the first time LABI has chosen a conservative pundit as its keynote speaker. Ben Carson, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate and Trump's secretary for Housing and Urban Development, headlined the 2015 event.
