Source: Heidi Gutman / Getty
Jemele Hill took to Twitter Wednesday (Feb, 22) to thank the ladies of “The View” for giving her the opportunity to guest co-host and “tell my side of things.”
The hot topic was the Trump tweet that almost got her fired from ESPN. Five months later, it’s still live on her account.
“Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”
“I did not expect in that moment that it was going to become what it became,” Hill said on “The View” Wednesday morning. As noted by The Daily Beast, in the days and weeks that followed, she was condemned by both ESPN and Donald Trump, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called her comments a “fireable offense.”
Asked by co-host Meghan McCain if she still stands by what she said, Hill replied, “I still stand by what I said,” but adding, “I don’t think that his supporters are white supremacists.”
“What I would say, though, is that they have the benefit and privilege to be able to distance and disassociate themselves from certain issues,” she added. “Me, as a woman of color, I feel vulnerable to certain behaviors, certain policies, certain things that he’s said and done. And so all of that was part of that response, feeling that vulnerability. If it doesn’t impact you directly or if you don’t feel that, it’s probably harder for you to understand it.”
Hill then explained to Trump supporters that “people of color are under attack.”
McCain later asked: Would Hill consider Ben Carson a “white supremacist?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Hill said. While also noting that she doesn’t believe everyone around Trump is a White Supremacist, only those who have “at the very least played footsie with white supremacists.”
A month after Hill came under fire for expressing her opinion about Trump, she received a two-week suspension from ESPN for tweeting about Trump supporter and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. After Jones said he would punish players for kneeling during the national anthem, Hill suggested going after the NFL’s advertisers.
“No, I probably wouldn’t do that again,” Hill admitted. “Twitter’s not a good place for nuance. And I wasn’t specifically calling for a boycott of the NFL or of Jerry Jones, but I understand how it could be interpreted that way.”
“And let’s just keep it 100, my employer is in business with the NFL,” she added. “So I very much understood why I was suspended.”
SOURCE: EURweb.com
Article Courtesy of EURweb
First and Second Picture Courtesy of Heidi Gutman and Getty Images
