David Simon To White House Suggestion That ESPN Sack Host Over Trump Tweets: “F*ck Off”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders
REX/Shutterstock

After the White House today suggested ESPN host Jemele Hill’s recent tweet calling President Donald Trump a “white supremacist” is “a “fireable offense,” some noteworthy people came to her defense.

Among them:

….and

Earlier this week, Hill tweeted that Trump “is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/other white supremacists,” that his “rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period,” that “he has empowered white supremacists (see: Charlottesville). She called him “unqualified” and “unfit to be president,” adding that, “if he were not white he never would have been elected.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders asserted the fireable-ness of Hill’s tweets at today’s briefing after being asked directly to comment on the tweets by Washington Post White House reporter David Nakamura, who used to cover sports for the paper. In his question, Nakamura asked Sanders if Trump had a reaction to the controversy.

When Sanders responded, “I’m not sure if he’s aware” of the tweets, “but I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make, and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Nakamura had his story.

“White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday struck back at ESPN host Jemele Hill for referring to President Trump a ‘white supremacist,’calling the comment ‘outrageous’ and saying she should lose her job,” he wrote in WaPo.

It’s a bit much to swallow that Trump was not aware of the tweets, given that Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly timeslot replacement Tucker Carlson had feasted on them Tuesday night. Hill’s tweets were Tucker’s lead story, saying at the top of that night’s show: “You probably thought ESPN stood for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network. Increasingly it looks like Endless Stupid Political Nagging” and sounds more “like the sociology department at Bennington College.”

Probably a good place here to mention Fox has its own, competing sports network.

Getting back to Nakamura’s coverage of his own question, he noted that when “asked about Hill’s series of tweets Monday evening, in which the sportscaster also said Trump’s rise was “the direct result of white supremacy,” Sanders responded: ‘That’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.’”

Nakamura said ESPN “scolded” Hill, which we will refrain from calling sexist. The Disney-owned network has not suspended Hill, who co-hosts SportsCenter.

It did, however, issue this statement:

Here are Hill’s tweets:

This article was printed from https://deadline.com/2017/09/david-simon-white-house-donald-trump-white-supremacist-jenelle-hill-tweets-fire-1202169333/

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