Now that Jemele Hill has parted ways with her former employers at ESPN, she’s pretty free to speak on the controversies that arose when she was there.
Hill referred to Donald Trump as a white supremacist in September 2017, which made headlines and got her in trouble with the network. The tweet was also called a “fireable offense” by the White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
But during an interview on the podcast “South Beach Sessions,” Hill — who’s now a staff writer for The Atlantic — said she has no regrets about the tweet, and from the very beginning, she didn’t understand what the fuss was about.
“I was in the middle of a Twitter conversation,” Hill explained. “I was replying to somebody. If I was really trying to make a bold statement, I would have added the damn president. I didn’t. I was just talking casually with somebody. It wasn’t even original. That’s what is so crazy. I got famous for saying something that wasn’t original. It wasn’t new. It was not breaking news. I thought we all decided this after Charlottesville.”
And if Hill was let go, suspended or faced any other kind of punishment for the tweet, she would’ve been fine with it, she explained.
“I knew almost immediately that, if I did face some kind of permanent discipline, if I did lose my job, if I was immediately suspended, I was OK with it,” said the Detroit native.
This isn’t the first time that Hill addressed the Trump tweet. Earlier this year, she stopped by “The View” and stood by her words but said she would’ve done things differently when she told people to boycott advertisers who work with the Dallas Cowboys after team owner Jerry Jones came out against players protesting during the national anthem.
Hill said if given the chance again, she would’ve addressed the issue in a column instead of on social media.
