White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that ESPN commentator Jemele Hill’s tweets calling President Donald Trump a white supremacist were a “fireable offense” at a press conference on Wednesday.
An ESPN commentator criticized Trump. The White House wants her fired.
Jemele Hill tweeted that Trump is a white supremacist, which press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says is “a fireable offense”
Bruce Yeung / Getty Images
Sanders was responding to a question about whether the president had seen Hill’s Monday night tweets in which the sports commentator, who is a black woman, called Trump “the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime” and “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.” “If,” Hill continued, “he were not white, he never would have been elected.”
When asked by Washington Post Reporter David Nakamura about the tweets, Sanders said, “I’m not sure [Trump is] aware, but I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and certainly something I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.”
ESPN responded to Hill’s tweets in a statement Tuesday, saying, “The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the President do not represent the position of ESPN. We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate.” The tweets have not been deleted, and Hill still works for ESPN.
Following Sanders’s comment, many on Twitter expressed horror at the idea that the White House would encourage ESPN to fire someone for criticizing the president.
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