Jemele Hill speaks out again over Trump's racist statements. He's gonna hate this.
Earlier in September, after the White House directly called for ESPN to fire their anchor Jemele Hill over her strong anti-Trump comments, Hill took to Twitter to defend herself and her statements.
Hill had called Trump a "white supremacist" as well as "the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime" over his response to the Charlottesville protests. Many agreed with her. Many, too, thought her position at ESPN precluded her from talking politics.
The backlash against Hill was swift, although ESPN stopped short of firing her from the network (which seeks to appeal to sports fans on many sides, many sides).
Instead, they reprimanded her on Twitter.
"The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the President do not represent the position of ESPN," they wrote. "We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate."
As recently as this Wednesday, Hill said she regretted making the comments over Twitter. In a first-person piece for the Undefeated, Hill said "Twitter wasn't the place to vent my frustrations because, fair or not, people can't or won't separate who I am on Twitter from the person who co-hosts the 6 p.m. SportsCenter."
But she also added this: "Let me be clear about something else: My criticisms of the president were never about politics. In my eyes, they were about right and wrong."
And for Hill, it looks like "right or wrong" just won out over the idea that "Twitter [isn't] the place to vent." Today, it's exactly the place.
Hill fired off another tweet on Thursday, this time regarding Trump's comments on the NFL kneeling controversy:
Retweeting a quote from Trump, Hill wrote: "Oh my, we have reached peak racial demagoguery." That was in reference to the following quote from the president:
"I have so many friends that are owners and they're in a box. I mean, I've spoken to a couple of them, and they say, 'We are in a situation where we need to do something.' I think they're afraid of their players, if you want to know the truth, and I think it's disgraceful."
Yup, Trump really said that. You can watch him saying it right here:
In the last week, Trump's made a strong effort to stoke anger about NFL protests, which became far more prevalent once he referred to any player kneeling as a "son of a bitch."
After that, NFL players seemed to decide in mass to wade into politics—in several cases alongside the team's owners—without concern for appearances.
Maybe Jemele Hill did too.