Everyone already knows ESPN is a toxic wasteland of liberal propaganda that has seriously lost focus of doing what they were designed to do, which is to give us the sports highlights.
It kind of has to remind you of MTV in the 1990s becoming a network of insufferable reality shows instead of showing music videos. It’s one of the most perplexing things in television history. ESPN is moving in that direction where it’s a bunch of talking heads giving terrible liberal “hot takes” on sports and politics.
And this furious ESPN employee might get fired for his aggressive comments about President Trump’s latest rally.
Remember Jemele Hill?
Hill is a former ESPN employee who stirred controversy at her network when she privately – outside of work – tweeted that President Trump is a white supremacist. That resulted in a two-week suspension but her career was never the same after that.
She co-anchored “The Six” for ESPN and the ratings plummeted. Fast. The show was canceled after a couple of short months and then she floated around to other shows for a while. Not long after, Hill and ESPN agreed to a buyout and now she works for “The Atlantic.”
A similar controversy is brewing over at ESPN right now.
Dan Le Batard of the “Dan Le Batard Show” and “Highly Questionable” recently condemned a recent President Trump rally on his radio show and was unapologetic in doing so. Specifically, he called out the fact some of the attendees chanted “Send her back” when Trump mentioned Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Le Batard said, “This felt un-American what happened last night … It’s not the America that my parents aimed to get for us, for exiles, for brown people. There’s a racial division in this country that’s being instigated by the president and we here at ESPN haven’t had the stomach for that fight because Jemele [Hill] did some things on Twitter and you saw what happened after that and then here, all of a sudden, nobody talks politics on anything unless they use one of these sports figures as a meat shield in the most cowardly possible way to discuss these subjects.”
Le Batard and his co-host father (along with his wife) fled Communist-occupied Cuba to become American citizens.
Here’s a video of what he said.
Stop what you’re doing and watch this.@LeBatardShow responds to the racist “Send her back” and “Go back to your country” attacks against Ilhan Omar and other congresswomen.
“If you’re not calling it abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous rhetoric, you’re complicit.” pic.twitter.com/ntOC2Seg3b
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) July 18, 2019
After this, apparently ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro reprimanded Le Batard and the veteran pleaded with him to get permission to talk about politics moving forward. To be clear, ESPN still allows its employees to discuss politics only when it crosses sports.
That’s why Pitaro was apparently steadfast and said no.
And then Le Batard didn’t show up to his radio show because he didn’t feel mentally prepared.
Le Batard and Pitaro plan to meet on Thursday to discuss how they want to proceed but it could be a catch-22 case here. Both of them might remain held in their stances, which will ultimately either result in firing, quitting or a buyout.