Dan LeBatard didn't sugarcoat it: "It is antithetical to what we should be, and if you’re not calling it abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous rhetoric, you’re complicit."
July 19, 2019

ESPN radio and TV personality Dan Le Batard thwarted his boss's mandate that politics are not discussed on the network, instead lambasting Trump over his racism and ESPN's cowardice in refusing to confront it.

After Jemele Hill called Trump a white supremacist on Twitter, she was suspended. ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro issued a shameful policy in an effort to appease the networks older white conservative racist male viewers.

Le Batard opened up his segment by saying, "I've got to talk about what happened with Trump last night."

The ESPN host was referencing Trump's North Carolina fascist-like rally on Wednesday, when Trump attacked Rep. Omar so vehemently, his cultists started chanting "send her back."

Dan said what happened at he rally was "deeply offensive" and "un-American."

"Basically a chant "send her back" is not the America that my parents came to get for us for exiled for brown people like," Le Batard said.

He continued, "There is 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 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 we can use one of these sports figures as a meat shield in the most cowardly possible way to discuss these subjects."

Go Dan, go Dan, go Dan, go!

“The only way we can discuss it around here—because this isn’t about politics, it’s about race; what you’re seeing happening around here is about race and it’s been turned into politics—we only talk about it around here when Steve Kerr or [Gregg] Popovich says something. We don’t talk about what is happening unless there’s some sort of weak, cowardly sports angle that we can run it through, when sports has always been a place where this stuff changes.”

“We won’t talk about it unless Russell Wilson is saying something about it on his Instagram page. Then we have the power to run with it. Weak-ass shield. It is antithetical to what we should be, and if you’re not calling it abhorrent, obviously racist, dangerous rhetoric, you’re complicit.”

I'd like to add something but he already said it all. What a courageous act for an ESPN sports host who could be fired for standing up to a CEO who wants to whitewash Trump's racism in the name of appeasing their white supremacist viewers and listeners. Well done.

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