ESPN's First Take is one of those sports opinion shows where commentators are expected to argue for the cameras and give controversial takes on the day's sports news, and that's basically what Max Kellerman and Stephen A. Smith do every day. Perform. But in this instance, Max Kellerman strayed a bit too far into the political, basically calling Trump voters and college football fans of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) stupid, and easily manipulated by Trump's propaganda.
That will no doubt land Kellerman in hot water.
Source: Outkick
Max Kellerman, speaking in a segment on First Take today about what all of the ongoing protests in the NBA and canceled practices mean in the NFL, said that President Donald Trump’s base voters in the SEC “seem to be susceptible to very low quality information and easy to propagandize and almost immune to facts”:
MAX KELLERMAN: “You made the argument a couple weeks ago, you thought if SEC football wasn’t played that could swing the general election because people in Trump’s base would be very upset that they didn’t have football, which is practically a religion down there,” Kellerman said, speaking to Stephen A. Smith. “I disagreed because he would simply shift blame because the pandemic is raging. They seem to be susceptible to very low quality information and easy to propagandize and almost immune to facts. Because, as Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s advisor, said, they have alternative facts. If they stay in their propaganda silos — like the Fox News propaganda silo — it wouldn’t matter what happened because they’d say the handling of the pandemic has been great. The handling of the pandemic has been the worst in the industrialized democratic world, by far. By far, in the United States, at a federal level, it’s been a disaster. And as a result we’re dealing with this pandemic. And yet I didn’t think that would affect voters because the blame would be shifted.”
Here’s video of ESPN’s Max Kellerman saying SEC fans are dumb, susceptible to propaganda & don’t care about facts and that’s why they support President Trump. All but one of the SEC’s games will be on ESPN networks this fall. Yikes. https://t.co/63Aq9EikE7
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 27, 2020
