With America coming off its worst monthly jobs report in seven years, 90 percent of Puerto Ricans lacking electricity and wildfires killing people in California, President Trump turned his attention this morning to the important subject of Jemele Hill.
Hill, the ESPN SportsCenter anchor who was condemned by the White House for calling Trump a white supremacist, was suspended by ESPN this week for suggesting that fans could affect Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ stance on national anthem protests by boycotting Jones’ advertisers. Trump jumped back into the subject this morning by attacking Hill and ESPN on Twitter.
“With Jemele Hill at the mike, it is no wonder ESPN ratings have ‘tanked,’ in fact, tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry!” Trump wrote.
ESPN has certainly struggled in the ratings department in the last couple years, but that’s more a result of American viewership patterns as a whole than about any one ESPN employee. As more and more Americans cancel their cable and satellite subscriptions and go with Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services as their only TV options, ESPN loses more and more viewers. So there’s some truth to Trump saying ESPN has “tanked,” but the reality is market forces much larger than Jemele Hill are the primary reason for that.
What Hill does do, however, is allow Trump to rile up his base and suggest that the liberal media is attacking him with all those “fake news” stories about the real problems America is facing. Hill and the NFL have recently become some of Trump’s favorite distractions.