ESPN went ridiculously “woke” with its sports coverage.
That created a vacuum for sports media content that wasn’t overtly political.
But an ESPN competitor left his fans speechless with one shocking move.
The idea of “barstool conservatism” is dead, and Dave Portnoy killed it.
Portnoy, who founded Barstool Sports, was never a rock-ribbed conservative, but he was willing to call out the establishment left and not pander to the “woke” mob like so many other high-profile media figures.
But ever since gambling company Penn National bought a stake in Barstool for $500 million, Portnoy has quickly fallen in line with the left.
Portnoy recently criticized anti-establishment comedian Alex Stein, who has rapidly built a brand by trolling politicians of both parties in person, and at city council meetings.
Blaze Media writer and podcast host Jason Whitlock eviscerated Portnoy for his cowardice and hypocrisy.
Whitlock said on his show, “Barstool’s Twitter feed posted a hilarious video of Stein trolling members of the Las Vegas City Council. Within hours, Barstool deleted the post. Stein called out Barstool’s cowardice, tweeting, ‘It’s so cute that Barstool Sports is owned by Stool Presidente who is accused of the most heinous things, but they are too afraid to keep my content up.’”
Portnoy was embroiled in a #MeToo scandal when he was accused by girls in their early 20s of sexual misconduct.
No criminal charges were filed, but the allegations were enough to hurt Portnoy in the court of public opinion.
Whitlock continued, “Portnoy struck his tough-guy pose, responding: ‘Buddy shut the f*ck up. We are owned by a gambling company. We’ve had roughly 9,000 training sessions not to post sh*t like this cause regulators don’t like it…Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.’ Via DM, Portnoy offered to have Stein on a podcast, but quickly changed course. Portnoy is a fraud. He has no core values. No defined set of beliefs. He has no redeeming qualities other than his wealth. Remove his money, and he wouldn’t have a friend in this world.”
Portnoy lost many supporters when he went on an insane rant about abortion after the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Nobody expected Portnoy to be pro-life, but he sounded indistinguishable from an unhinged, “woke” leftist.
Portnoy said, “At what point do you look at the Constitution and say, ‘Hey, this was written by people who had slaves?’ Maybe not everything is exactly to a T in the Constitution. Like, a million years from now, you’re going to use a document written in…? It’s just nuts. In what world? The world evolves. People evolve. Technology evolves. You gotta evolve. You can’t stick with this document and look at that and be like ‘that’s the end-all, be-all.’ It’s literally crazy pills.”
Portnoy claims to be a common-sense centrist, but calling for the abolition of the Constitution puts him in line with the wokest of the woke left.
Penn National is now slated to take 100% ownership of Barstool, so expect “El Presidente” to be even more pro-establishment down the road.