Sage Steele, a former anchor with ESPN, has revealed that top executives at the “sports” network dictated — to the word — an interview she was to conduct with President Joe Biden in 2021.
ESPN, which is owned by Disney, is well known as a “woke” or “politically correct” outlet that often interjects political and social commentary into its sports broadcasts. Apparently, this inclusion of left-wing commentary is not limited to an occasional remark by a rogue reporter, but is rather company policy.
Steele was to interview Biden, who had been in office for only a few weeks, when she was told that her interview with the president was to be filled with a series of softball questions. “It was very much ‘This is what you will ask. This how you will say it. No follow-ups, no follow-ups.” Each question, Steele told Fox News, was “gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives.”
While Steele was not told that the questions were orchestrated with the White House prior to the interview, it would be safe to assume they were.
“I was told,” Steele added, “You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script.”
The bulk of the questions that Steele was ordered to ask Biden — with no deviation — had to do with sports leagues regaining normalcy in the aftermath of the rules (such as the NBA playing all of their games in a confined environment) adopted due to the Covid pandemic.
During the scripted interview, Biden told Steele he was offering “strong support” to the decision to move the Major League Baseball All-Star game out of Atlanta, so as to punish Georgia’s enactment of a new voting law. The Republican-backed law that Biden disapproved of was one adding a photo ID requirement for any absentee voting by mail, and disallowing the giving of food and water to people standing in lines to vote.
Biden condemned the law as “Jim Crow on steroids,” in an apparent effort to accuse Georgia’s Legislature of passing a law discriminating against blacks. Interestingly, former Georgia Governor and President Jimmy Carter was co-chairman of a committee that made recommendations a couple decades ago that advocated for a photo ID requirement before someone could vote.
And, insofar as giving out food and water to citizens waiting to vote, it is not like those people were in danger of imminent starvation. The law was designed to prevent “electioneering” at the polling place, in which someone would say, “Here is a water bottle from the Joe Biden campaign” or otherwise express support for a candidate (perhaps by wearing a T-shirt sporting a candidate’s name).
Steele was later kicked off ESPN when she publicly objected to ESPN’s policy requiring all of its employees to receive the Covid vaccines. “I respect everyone’s decision [whether to take the vaccine], I really do, but to mandate it is, um, sick. And it’s scary to me [in] many ways. But I have a job, a job that I love, and frankly, a job that I need, but again, I love it. I’m not surprised it got to this point, especially with Disney.”
She had previously gotten in trouble with the network regarding former President Barack Obama about identifying as black, rather than biracial (Obama’s mother was a white woman). Steele was responding to criticism that she had said she is “proud” to be both black and white, and compared her biracial status with Obama’s. She also added that Obama’s black father was “not around” to help raise him. He was reared by his mother and his white grandparents in a middle-class environment. Apparently such commentary does not fit the acceptable narrative on woke networks.
Steele noted in a recent interview that ESPN hosts can promote progressive viewpoints, but not conservative ones. “Different rules for me than for anybody else.”
Not surprisingly, she faced vicious criticism over her revelation that ESPN gave special preference to Biden, preventing her from asking questions that he might not want to be asked. For example, Keith Olbermann retorted, “Of COURSE it was scripted. If it hadn’t been” Steele could not have gotten through the interview, because she is “the dumbest person I’ve ever worked with in sports or news.”
Another left-wing sports site, Deadspin, made snide remarks about Steele’s race, calling her the “Black Candace Owens.” Owens is also black, but because she is mostly conservative, then the joke, I suppose, is that she is not really black. Deadspin also referred to Steele as “IDIOT OF THE YEAR.”
Blacks who dare to deviate from the left-wing line are special targets for this type of personal attack. We have seen it in the attacks on Clarence Thomas, for example. President Biden told a black political commentator that if he was even thinking about voting for Donald Trump, “you ain’t black.”
The revelation of what goes on behind the scenes at ESPN is not surprising. No doubt, such favoritism for Democrats is practiced every day. All one has to do is read stories by alleged journalists who regularly say that former President Trump “lied,” or that he offered his opinion “without evidence.” This is done all the time. In contrast, no matter how outrageously false a comment that those on the Left like Joe Biden make, no journalist on ABC, NBC, CBS, or ESPN would ever dare say that Biden lied.
If they did, they would be out of a job, like Sage Steele.
