ESPN Releases Statement On Anchor Jemele Hill’s Tweets About Trump, White Supremacy

Jemele Hill created an online storm on Monday after sending out a series of tweets lambasting President Donald Trump as a “white supremacist,” and ESPN has now reprimanded the SportsCenter anchor.

ESPN anchor Jemele Hill Trump Tweets News

In a statement released Tuesday, ESPN said 41-year-old Hill’s comments do not reflect the network’s opinions.

She then went on to explain what “the height of white privilege” means to her:

Hill finished off by calling Trump “ignorant, offensive, unqualified and unfit to be president.”

ESPN has been accused by hard-line conservative for being too openly liberal with its politics. The network has not said whether Hill will be suspended or face any other type of punishment for her posts, which come after a series of clashes between Neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white supremacists and counter-protesters across the country.

Hill has not commented on the incident since ESPN’s statement was released. However, one notable athlete who has also caused controversy for making statements about racial injustice expressed his support for the anchor on Twitter: Colin Kaepernick.

“We are with you @jemelehill,” the free-agent quarterback wrote.

In March, Hill tweeted that while there was a “limited market” for Kaepernick, once Trump told a rally that NFL owners “don’t want to get a nasty tweet” from him about signing the quarterback, Kaepernick would likely remain a free agent. When the Ravens, in the wake of a July injury to quarterback Joe Flacco, added a relative unknown in David Olson, Hill criticized the team by tweeting that Baltimore “signed a dude who quit football to be a realtor and played in 2 games in college over a Super Bowl QB.”

Kaepernick helped lead the San Francisco 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII after the 2012 season — his second year with the Niners — but the team lost to the Ravens.

ESPN also recently faced controversy in the wake of the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia in August. The network chose to remove announcer Robert Lee from its coverage of a football game at the University of Virginia — which is located in Charlottesville — because he shares the same name as Confederate General Robert E. Lee, a statue whose removal sparked the rally in the city on Aug. 11.

LOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 27: Jemele Hill attends the official BET Experience gifting suite sponsored by Hennessy at Los Angeles Convention Center on June 27, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Noel Vasquez/Getty Images for Hennessy V.S)