Right-wing news outlet One America News fired “The Matt Gaetz Show” producer Vish Burra on Monday after he posted a cartoon last week that characterized Jewish people as scheming cockroaches he later labeled as “vermin,” TheWrap has confirmed.
Burra, a script writer and booker on Gaetz’s show, was terminated after network executives found his comments “highly offensive” and “antisemitic,” a source familiar with the matter told TheWrap.
OAN declined to comment. When reached by TheWrap by phone, Burra hung up.
Burra engulfed the network in a firestorm last week after he posted an AI-generated cartoon on social media that depicted him entering a “scheming room” that featured a label with the Star of David. The cartoon portrayed Jewish people as cockroaches that scurried away as he entered the room.
“I will expose the vermin in the venomous coalition and their transgressions against MAGA, America First, and Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation,” he wrote on X. He named Susan Lebovitz-Edelman, the wife of billionaire biotech investor Joseph Edelman, who he alleged was trying to oust Roberts over his defense of Tucker Carlson’s interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
Burra deleted the cartoon hours later, and Gaetz tried to tamp down the anger in an X post on Saturday.
“My producer Vish Burra posted something dumb this week,” he wrote. “He knew it was dumb and quickly deleted it. I too have posted dumb things on social media without thinking – some I’ve deleted, some I haven’t. And I’ve had to pay some consequences along the way. Vish will too.”
“I’m not the internet hall monitor of any of my coworkers (thankfully.)” he added
But OAN anchor Stella Escobedo on Sunday highlighted a wave of posts Burra made in recent weeks targeting Jewish people, including a defense of someone wearing a Nazi uniform for Halloween and a claim that “America First means not being held hostage by a nearly century-old postwar consensus fairytale about what happened in World War 2.” (Burra later wrote that he was referring to “what were told happened in World War 2 being a fairytale, not specifically about the Holocaust.”)
“Hey Matt – as a Jewish woman who works at OAN, I’m trying to understand a few things,” she wrote on X, listing six different posts from the last five months.
Burra previously worked as a staffer for convict and former congressman George Santos, where he was scrutinized for payments he received from a one-time aide and for his sexually suggestive comments toward a female freelance journalist.
