This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

A talk radio host said he was fired from a rightwing radio station – mid-show – for criticizing Donald Trump.

Craig Silverman was hosting his eponymous show on 710 KNUS, a Denver station owned by the conservative Salem Media Group, on Saturday when the station abruptly cut to a network news report.

According to Silverman, the program director entered the studio and told him: “You’re done.”

Silverman had been in the middle of a segment about Roy Cohn, Trump’s controversial former lawyer who died in 1986.

Silverman, a rare critic of Trump on the conservative network, said he had run into problems with executives at the station due to his refusal to “toe strict Trump party line”.

“I was frustrated that we couldn’t talk about the facts of the impeachment case and it all came to a head as I was excoriating Donald Trump on my show yesterday,” Silverman told CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday.

On Sunday night, however, KNUS said Silverman was not fired – despite the station removing his page from its website – but was taken off air after he discussed a planned appearance on a rival network.

“He decided that it was important to work across town and so on Saturday on his program he announced that, and that’s what prompted our decision to take him off the air,” station general manager Brian Taylor told the Denver Post.

“The notion that he was relieved from his program because he criticized President Trump is absolutely untrue. We’ve never told Mr Silverman the position to take on [Trump’s] impeachment.”

Speaking to CNN Business, Silverman outlined his position, discussing the witnesses who appeared in public hearings last week.

“I thought [William] Taylor and [George] Kent were great,” he said, “they laid a base. I’m a trial attorney, I’m a former prosecutor. I know how to put on a case.

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“And then Marie Yovanovitch. She inspired me. She was an outstanding witness, but if nobody on radio talks about it, how are the American people going to understand?”

Silverman told the Washington Post he began appearing on other networks after he stopped being invited on to other shows on KNUS. He also said his contract with KNUS was “nonexclusive”.

As of Monday morning, he had not said whether he would return to his show.

Taylor said: “I look forward to Craig continuing his program.”