ESPN radio and TV personality Dan Le Batard skipped Monday morning’s edition of the Dan Le Batard Show after he delivered an impassioned rebuke of the racist “send her back” chants from a Trump rally in North Carolina last week.
In the process, Le Batard called out ESPN’s own handling of politics — breaking the “no politics” rule that network president Jimmy Pitaro put into place this year. According to USA TODAY Sports, the network hasn’t wavered from that policy and reiterated that fact to Le Batard.
But Le Batard didn’t take the whole day off in response to the controversy. Come Monday afternoon, he was back on ESPN to host his TV show, Highly Questionable. That was when Le Batard used the opening of the program to make a brief joke about his situation with ESPN.
Le Batard said, introducing Israel Gutierrez and then his father, “Papi” Le Batard:
“Hello, usually this guy is highly questionable. This guy is ALWAYS highly questionable. But today, I feel like I’m the most highly questionable.”
On Thursday, Le Batard said of the racist chants directed at Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar:
“So, what happened last night. This felt un-American. Basically, a chant, ‘Send her back.’ It’s not the America that my parents came to get for us … There’s a racial division in this country that’s being instigated by the president. And we here at ESPN haven’t had the stomach for that fight because Jemele (Hill) did some things on Twitter, and you saw what happened after that. Then, here, all of the sudden, nobody talks politics on anything unless we can use one of these sports figures as a meat shield in the most cowardly possible way to discuss the subject.”
According to USA TODAY Sports, ESPN is still evaluating potential discipline for Le Batard after his remarks.
