On his radio show Thursday, Le Batard, who is the son of Cuban immigrants, condemned the network’s “cowardly” policy limiting on-air personalities from engaging in political discussion.
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Former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Jemele Hill criticized Trump on Twitter in 2017, calling him “a white supremacist.” She was suspended for her comments and has since left the network.
Le Batard continued:
Le Batard believes it is a duty of sports broadcasters to comment on race relations. He also spoke about athletes like Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick, who have used their platforms to address race and other social problems in the United States.
That’s what you’re seeing. And 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 has been turned into politics. And 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 been a place where this stuff changes."
LeBatard was absent from the first hour of his show Friday. Some speculated that he might have been suspended.
