>> In a time when Donald Trump is attacking so many different groups of Americans, can
any major media outlet completely avoid talking about politics?
Well, so far, ESPN's done a pretty good job of it under Donald Trump.
But not all of its hosts want to continue that way.
Take a look at what Dan Le Batard said earlier today.
>> What you're seeing happening around here is about race.
And it's been turned into politics, and we only talk about it around here when Steve
Kerr or 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.
Man, Mohammed Ali was fighting for this stuff in the 60s.
Bill Russell and Jim Brown are really old, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is old.
These people who are fighting, the most powerful among us in sports who are fighting in the
civil rights era for things, atrocities happening to black people that we're still paying for
now in a country where this is our greatest sin.
What has happened to minorities in this country?
They're old and dying.
Jim Brown walks with a cane, man.
He walks with a cane.
He's gonna go to the grave without having seen change.
He's gonna go to the grave with Colin Kaepernick still out of the league but literally blackballed.
>> Okay, so I wanna make a lot of commentary on DanLe Batard's great, great points here,
and we've got more of his video for you But first, fun points.
How awkward was that camera shot on that guy?
>> Until he was like, I can't take it anymore, I'm just gonna walk out.
>> I'm good.
>> Why are you still taking my shot when this guy is being poignant political point, and
I can't stand to be here anymore?
It made me feel good about cuz sometimes we'll stay an extra half a second on one of the
hosts.
Well, we don't stay an extra 45 seconds on the host, and that's ESPN, right?
The wrong guy, I love that.
>> They reached out to the director and asked, why did you let that shot continue for so
long?
And he said, I shut it down very fast, very fast.
>> Wow.
>> The director, apparently, Donald Trump.
And then I have a wonderful personal story about Dan Le Batard.
I just ran into him in Miami.
You guys will love it.
It has nothing to do with his story, so I'll save it to the end.
All right, back to you, John.
>> Okay, so you wanna go to more of this video?
>> Yeah, because he's made some wonderful points.
Let's hear more and then talk about why he's so right.
>> Exactly.
I mean, he's making great points about what's going on, but he also ties it in with the
sometimes stated but often silent policy.
The ESPN did not get into these sorts of materials as you'll see.
>> This is deeply offensive to me as somebody whose parents made all the sacrifices to get
to this country.
Send her back.
How are you any more American than her?
You're more privileged, you're whiter, you're richer?
People don't know whether your money's real or not.
You've had every privilege afforded to you by America, every privilege.
And now, what you do with that power is you go after brown people and black people and
minorities.
And around here, we won't talk about it.
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.
>> That's strong.
>> Okay, yeah, it’s super strong.
Again, though, with the camera shots.
If you notice the guy who left his seat, cuz he couldn’t take it any more, they got him.
He sits down in a new place, and they got it from the side angle.
Still not sure while we talk.
It's a tiny funny point, let's move on to the major stuff.
Look, what first thing Le Batard said was about sports history, million percent right.
In 1968 Olympics where they obviously raised their hands with the black gloves.
We've covered that story 1,000 times.
Muhammad Ali not going to Vietnam, going to prison over it.
And Jim Brown, and he went over some of those, we can go.
I agree with him, it is amazing that it is the year 2019, and there's still black balling
athletes like Colin Kaepernick for speaking out.
And it's always speaking out on behalf of justice.
That is a thing that people cannot tolerate.
They will not have it.
And so, when is the last time someone got blackballed because they were too right-wing?
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> In sports, I literally don't know any time that has ever happened on a right-winger.
And what a left-winger is not doing, it's not like, hey, well, it was left-wing, but
he was really militant.
Well, Kaepernick, talk to you guys who are in the military, decided the most respectful
way to protest police shooting unarmed black men wants to take a knee during the flag,
during the anthem.
It cannot be more civil.
It cannot be more constitutionally protected freedom of speech, etc., etc.
And still, they're blackballing people over it.
He won a lawsuit over it.
It's absolutely definitive that they did that.
And so, and now ESPN is like.
And why?
All because of right-wing intimidation, because God, they cry and cry and cry.
No one cries like a right-winger.
So the minute you're saying, I'm not gonna watch you.
And it's not true, they always watch, the ratings never go down.
The Nike's stock went up by $6 billion after they supported Kaepernick.
People keep buying, so he's at 1,000%, right?
Yes, I said a million and 1,000%, okay?
Neither one of those is real.
>> Add them together.
>> No, I think Le Batard made some excellent points, and he's absolutely right in terms
of athletes speaking out.
But also, his concern of not being able to speak out unless it somehow intersected with
an athlete.
And that becomes problematic, because essentially, what ESPN is doing is asking its host to speak
on a daily basis about a variety of topics to limit their intersectionality.
To limit the issues that impact them and their communities or the issues that they care about.
And you can't divorce yourself from racial issues if you're a black woman or from issues
that impact your community.
And so to be silenced on that end is extremely problematic, and Le Batard was on the right
for calling it out.
>> Yeah, and by the way, sorry John, one quick thing about sports fans cuz you brought that
up.
If anyone knows it's okay to be on one side and not the other, it's sports fans.
So they don't respect you more if you're like, well, I like the Cowboys and the Steelers
just the same, right?
>> No, right, they get it.
You're on one side, I'm on the other side.
We go to war, and we figure out who wins, right?
>> Yeah.
>> And so, there's a guy named Matt Jones in Kentucky, populist guy, very progressive.
Does a progressive show out of Kentucky and doesn't hide?
It's sports show, doesn't hide it at all.
And he's for Kentucky, University of Kentucky, and he's against.
If you're a sports fan, and so what Mitch McConnell does is he's like, I like them both.
Get the, right?
>> Everybody knows.
So it's actually the worst place to try to pretend you're for everybody is in sports
cuz no actual fan will buy it.
>> Yeah, it's the analogy I'm gonna make to your earlier point about what you can get
away with and not get blackballed is not gonna be sports-related cuz I don't have those.
But Mel Gibson's getting movies now.
>> Yeah.
>> Richard Spencer was on CNN this week.
I can't get on CNN.
They put a Nazi on CNN, that's how this country works.
They will allow anything as long as you're right wing.
Now, to catch you up from that broadcast, ESPN spent today telling employees that its
no politics policy is still in place even after the show that we just showed you.
ESPN officials were spreading the word through the media Friday that nothing has changed
in terms of policy in which it only wants its commentators to delve into politics when
it intersects with sports.
Which I have to assume it means that they didn't listen to anything he said, because
the entire point he was making was that it naturally and necessarily intersects with
sports.
And so, I also wanna talk about some of the history of this, because I've been doing some
research after having Ricky Stroud sports on the damage for earlier today to talk about
this.
So, this is apparently a somewhat new policies, because under Pitaro's predecessor, the current
head John Skipper, ESPN had at times been more political.
And during the Trump administration, that sometimes made the network a target of criticism.
In 2017, former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill criticized Trump on Twitter.
She was suspended for the controversy and has since left the network.
The tweet that she was apparently suspended for was that Donald Trump is a white supremacist
who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists, which has only been proven
true a thousand times over since then.
But she also has tweeted a bit in response to what we just saw saying, ESPN isn't a political
network, but to me, and Dan, racism isn't political.
It is right and wrong.
Silence or tolerance of racism is racist, because that means on some level, you're okay
with other people being dehumanized.
She says, I do not blame ESPN for its approach because their primary function is to serve
fans and make money.
But some things are just bigger than that.
>> No, she's absolutely right.
>> Yeah.
>> Without question, she's insanely right on that point.
And kinda just to clarify, because the reality is in the optics of how it really actually
went down is that it's right.
She did tweet about the president being racist.
The thing is in the aftermath, a lot of people came to her defense, and she was rallied and
protected by a lot of celebrities and high profile people.
So ESPN could not necessarily suspend her without facing considerable backlash.
So what they did was wait until she tweeted something mundane about the Dallas Cowboys
and boycott not even advancing a boycott.
And then ESPN decided to read into that tweet and go ahead and say we’re suspending her
for that tweet.
And it’s one of those things where it’s all about optics, but we know the reality
of the situation.
And she is right in that there are things much bigger than sports, and they are sexism,
racism, and the things that impact individuals of marginalized communities that go on everywhere
at every company, all the time.
>> Yeah, so let me address a couple of those things.
So I know what right-wingers are thinking.
God, now you're gonna fire everybody for being racist.
Or, now you say that they can talk about racism and call people racist when they are racist,
outrageous, right?
But guys, even you have to recognize, there has to be some line, right?
So if Trump were to say, you know what, maybe we start putting the Jews in the camps.
Would anyone say, hey, no, ESPN shouldn't talk about it.
It's not about sports, it's not about sports.
And it doesn't matter if you're a Jewish host or you're a non-Jewish host.
It doesn't matter, you just stay out of it, etc.
Some of you might think that, but I think overwhelming majority of people would say,
no, that's okay, you should be talking about that.
So the question is, where is the line?
And so that's why Le Batard is kind of pushing here by being very aggressive.
I mean, saying that it's a weak ass shield to only do it if it comes up in the case of
sports.
So you're saying that using the sports figures as meat shields, calling it cowardly several
times.
Now, same reason why it's important that he's doing it is because he is one of their most
successful hosts.
And so you need someone with more leverage and power to be able to do it.
Because if you're a reporter in the field and you don't have as much leverage, and you
don't have ratings that rely on your personality, well, they'll fire you.
And that won't be hard at all.
When Dan does it, then it presents a question, what's ESPN gonna do?
They say, no, it's still in place.
Well, what are you gonna do about one of your top guys who just clearly obviously violated
that policy and called you out on it?
I don't know, right?
That's why it's important for powerful people to step up, not just grassroots folks.
So I wanna commend him twice over for that.
Even though now, I get to the funny relevant story.
So therefore, the Miami debate couple of weeks ago, I run into them, and I had known him
ever so briefly when I worked in Miami, when Ben and I worked at WAMI.
And I said, hey, Dan, it's Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks, and he's like, what?
>> Geez.
>> And I'm like, well, I used to work at WAMI, and you used to come in with Ben Mankiewicz,
and he's like, what?
>> So, my God, no one has remembered me less in American history.
>> God.
>> Wow, that is a great story, though, it really is.
>> Yeah.
>> That'll keep you humble.
>> And what I like, too, is that- >> I like that you threw Ben under the bus
there, too.
>> Yeah, I know, right?
And I might have even said, now he's the host of Turner Classic Movies, cuz obviously, Dan
doesn't recognize The Young Turks, doesn't know it at all, right?
So I'm like, and Turner Classic Movies, maybe that triggers something.
He's like, no.
>> Man.
>> And I was like, okay, I'm done.
>> But what I like is that- >> Actually, you were my roommate for a couple
of months.
>> You were at my wedding, come on, man.
>> But in both instances, over the top, honestly.
>> That's true.
>> Cuz lot of people would have been like, yeah, yeah, I think yeah, I remember that,
right?
>> Yeah.
>> Not what Dan knows like, no, I definitely do not remember you.
>> Yeah.
>> Or anything about you.
>> The only other thing I wanna say is that the sort of policy that they have at ESPN,
it just feels like the same thing that we see everywhere.
We're like, okay, ESPN can't talk about politics.
And CNN have seem to see to very careful about how you even talk about politics.
They'll challenge certain people, don't use certain words.
If something is racist, we'll leave it to other people.
Don't have primaries.
These sorts of things work like let's just keep everything calm, and everything civil,
and balanced, and neutral.
And all of that is BS.
All of that just means that the people who have power right now will benefit, because
nobody gets to challenge them.
It's just cowardice that allows the people who currently have the advantage to continue
to have the advantage in all cases.
>> Wonderful point, that's exactly right.
>> Absolutely correct.
>> Yep.