Jemele Hill was a big headline in the news a couple weeks back when she tweeted out a comparison of President Donald Trump to a white supremacist. She was back at it again after she tweeted about Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' stance on the national anthem protests. ESPN responded by officially suspended her for two weeks and now the President is commenting on the suspension:
The President has tried to make it clear that he won this little kerfuffle. Hill has not been fired despite the many people calling for it, including the White House after her first "offense." However, Disney (parent company to ESPN) CEO Bob Iger previously spoke into why the company chose not to fire her, via Yahoo:
"I felt that we had to take context into account. Context included what was going on in America. What I felt, what we felt, was that there were a lot of people who were outraged, particularly black people. They felt that the promise that was given to them — liberty and justice for all — during the Civil War or Civil Rights movement — were theirs. What they've seen in the last couple of months is the opposite," he said.
That context included the Charlottesville white nationalist rally where President Trump said both sides of the protest should share blame. Hill's latest comments on Jones and the national anthem protests finally forced ESPN to suspend her as they had made it clear what their expectations were for her after the incident in August.
Hill has a brigade of ardent followers who will likely be pressuring ESPN into an early ending of the suspension so that may be a development to keep an eye on over the next two weeks.
