Former ESPN host Jemele Hill, who famously called President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter last year, said in a new interview she didn’t realize the comment would be newsworthy.
“I thought I was saying water is wet,” Hill said. “I didn’t even think it was controversial.”
Hill opened up about the situation on the premiere episode of Dan Le Batard’s “South Beach Sessions,” a new podcast from ESPN’s recently launched Le Batard and Friends Podcast Network.
“I was in the middle of a Twitter conversation, I was replying to somebody. If I was really trying to make a bold statement, I would have added the damn president. I didn’t, I was just talking casually with somebody,” she said. “It wasn’t even original. That’s what is so crazy. I got famous for saying something that wasn’t original. It wasn’t new. It was not breaking news. I thought we all decided this after Charlottesville.”
Hill has also called Trump a “bigot” and “unqualified and unfit to be president.” Le Batard, a longtime friend of Hill, repeatedly called her an “accidental activist” and tried to describe to listeners that Hill is simply a journalist who got caught up in something she is passionate about. But Hill said that her while comments changed her life “in a dramatic way,” she doesn’t regret making them.
“I knew almost immediately that, if I did face some kind of permanent discipline, if I did lose my job, if I was immediately suspended, I was OK with it,” Hill said, as Le Batard added Hill might not have wanted the attention but isn’t the type of person to run from it. – READ MORE