ESPN Hires Keith Olbermann, Who Regularly Called Donald Trump A Nazi On Twitter

Last year ESPN responded to a controversy surrounding Jemele Hill calling the president and his supporters white supremacists by distancing the network from Hill's comments. In particular the company issued this statement:

Hill wasn't punished for her series of Tweets attacking Trump, which led many, including this website, to point out the unfair and unequal treatment liberal and conservative opinions received at ESPN. While Jemele Hill could call the president, his supporters, and his cabinet white supremacists and say the only reason Trump was elected president was because he was white, Curt Schilling couldn't support the North Carolina transgender bathroom bill. One man was fired for private political speech on social media, one woman suffered no consequences at all.

The only difference between the two? One shared a liberal opinion, the other shared a conservative opinion.

Since the sending of these Tweets Hill has been forced off the six PM edition of SportsCenter and seen her role at ESPN significantly diminished. It seems clear both sides are tired of each other. That's even more the case when you consider the public release ESPN recently put out trumpeting the increased ratings for SportsCenter since Hill and her co-host, Michael Smith, were removed from their hosting duties.

In recent months, under the new leadership of Jimmy Pitaro, it appeared ESPN was attempting to ratchet down the left wing, biased political discourse on the network. Then Friday happened, and ESPN made the inexplicable decision to announce the hiring of Keith Olbermann, a man who has made a career off far left wing politics.

If Hill's Tweets about the president being a white supremacist were inappropriate, how in the world can ESPN justify hiring Olbermann, who has regularly called the president a Nazi as well as a white supremacist psychopath?

Look at these Tweets, which are indicative of the Tweets he's sent out over the past year. Seriously, there are hundreds of Tweets like these which read like the rantings of a deranged madman.

 

Leaving aside the absurdity of Olbermann's accusations -- how many Nazis are beloved in Israel and have fantastic relationships with Jewish leaders, not to mention a daughter who converted to Judaism and grandchildren who are Jewish too? -- how in the world can ESPN hire a man who has sent far worse Tweets than Jemele Hill? If Hill's Tweets were "inappropriate" how are Olbermann's Tweets not much worse?

What's more, if you found Hill's Tweets so inappropriate that you helped to force her out of hosting SportsCenter, how in the world can you bring in Olbermann and let him host SportsCenters? This is so mind-bogglingly inconsistent I don't even see how it's possible to reach this decision. The entire purpose of having rules is so people understand what's expected of them. When you apply the rules to circumstances, you set precedents.

Here ESPN is effectively letting it be known that there are no rules and there are no precedents when it comes to far left wing politics. The rules only apply to conservative political speech.

Because Olbermann's insults are far beyond the pale of acceptable discourse, regardless of your own political leanings. I'd ask ESPN to justify this decision, but they'd just lie to me. So I'm not even going to bother asking them about it.

The truth of the matter is this -- hiring Keith Olbermann to talk abut sports on your network is indefensible. Unless, that is, ESPN would ever think about hiring Rush Limbaugh, again, or Sean Hannity to do a show on the network.

Moreover, how can anyone at ESPN argue that critics who see a far left wing agenda in their sports coverage are wrong when they make a decision like this? This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything I've been arguing for the past couple of years is completely correct. I honestly just don't see any way this decision was made. It's simply indefensible for anyone with a functional brain to make this decision.

Now you can certainly argue that when Olbermann sent these Tweets he wasn't an ESPN employee, but that's a nonsensical argument that even makes ESPN look even worse. When Hill sent her Tweets ESPN didn't know those Tweets were coming and was forced to react to them in real time. It's not as if they saw everything she'd Tweeted abotu Trump and still hired her. Everyone at ESPN knew exactly what Olbermann thought of the president already. As if that weren't enough Olbermann had written a book called, "Trump Is Fucking Crazy" with the helpful subtitle of "(This is not a joke.)"

If you fired Barstool after a single show because you found their past jokes inappropriate and offensive, how can you hire a guy who wrote a book calling the president fucking crazy, who regularly called the president a Nazi, and who has sent far more Tweets calling him a white supremacist psychopath than Jemele Hill ever did? And, again, this is a guy who is specifically acknowledging he isn't joking. This isn't satire or hyperbole being misconstrued and taken out of context, this is directly disparaging attacks on the president.

Put it this way, is there any way a conservative author would ever be hired at ESPN if he or she'd written a book called, "Hillary is fucking crazy (This is not a joke)" or, god forbid, written a book called "Obama is fucking crazy (This is not a joke)."

Of course not.

You're laughing even thinking about the idea.

By hiring Olbermann despite knowing everything he's written, ESPN is effectively endorsing his comments on Trump and sending a messing to every conservative viewer -- go elsewhere, we don't want you. What's more, Olbermann is an old guy without any fan base. We know this because his ESPN2 show was canceled a couple of years ago because no one watched. At least you could argue Jemele Hill is popular with a subset of young sports fans on social media who want to be woke. Sure, that's a small audience, but at least it's an audience. Does Olbermann even have a sports fan base at all? And if so is a tiny fan base of cantankerous old liberals a ticket to sports rating success?

Of course ESPN knew this criticism was coming, it's why they waited to put out the news until the Friday before Memorial Day, hoping to slide it past a public already focused on the holiday weekend. But that didn't stop my phone from blowing up with ESPN employee reactions. How, many of them asked, can we fire hundreds of hard working non-political employees and then hire this guy? Furthermore, how can you argue that you're leaving left wing politics behind when you just hired the single most political person on any sports network in the 21st century?

Look, despite what my critics say, I don't have a problem with politics mixing with sports. In general, I believe it's bad for business to mixing sports and politics when you're trying to appeal to everyone, but my primary issue with far left wing politics mixed with sports has been that it's dishonest and one sided. Half of Americans voted for Donald Trump for president. Sports fans are more conservative than the general public. This means that an absolute minimum at least half of ESPN's audience voted for Trump too. Does it make any sense at all for a major corporation attempting to appeal to everyone to hire a man who has called the president of the United States a pyschopathic Nazi white supremacist?

Of course not.

Unless, that is, you've decided to become the People's Republic of MSESPN, serving up all the far left wing sports news that's fit to print, every day, all day long.

Which is exactly what ESPN has done.

Their message to conservatives and moderates is simple -- get your news elsewhere, we don't respect you or your values. Worse than that, ESPN is also telling those people we won't even let you sit down on your couch and watch a sports games without getting that beaten over your head again and again.

ESPN just keeps proving it's a biased, untrustworthy, far left wing news organization.

Now I just wish I'd made the cover of my new book even better, showing Donald Trump dunking on Colin Kaepernick in an MSESPN jersey.