ESPN CONCEDES: Jason Whitlock Declares Victory Over Worldwide Leader | Ep 1202

**Jason Whitlock** (0:01)
Four score and several memos ago, a great sports network was brought forth on this continent, conceived in the belief that sports unite men, and dedicated to the proposition that all great highlights are created equal. Booyah, en fuego, he could go all the way.
Welcome to the Big Show.
We've been engaged in a great civil war, fighting for the soul of that old network, and for the freedom of the men captured and conscripted into the service of wokeism and DEI. No network, long captured, long corrupted, can long endure. It cannot. ESPN fired Ryan Clark, fired Jemele Hill, sent Maria Taylor packing to NBC. They thought they were punishing them and us. But we's free now. Today is July 22, a date that will live in infamy. And I'm here to read the Emancipation Proclamation.
They're blaming me. Yeah, me. NBC Sports, Pro Football Talk, Dan Lebatard's Flunkies. The entire sports media complex woke up Tuesday, looked at Cam Newton's pink slip and said, Yeah, Jason Whitlock did this. He got Cam fired from ESPN.
You know what? Maybe I did it. But here's the thing about blame. It depends entirely on whether you think what happened was a bad thing. If you think ESPN cleaning house of its most sanctimonious, most race obsessed, most woke pandering analyst is a tragedy, then yes, blame me. I'll sign the confession. But if you think ESPN firing people who turned a sports network into a grievance seminar with theme music is actually good for the country, then don't blame me. Thank me.

**Charles** (2:35)
There's that fire. Grab your popcorn.

**Jason Whitlock** (2:41)
Now, before we go any further, I want to give credit where it is due, absolutely due. Bobby Burack at OutKit, he did the work on Ryan Clark, specific, documented, relentless work, two, three years of holding Ryan Clark accountable for the race baiting, the agenda pushing, the intellectual dishonesty. Bobby Burack is a journalist. The kid is old school. If you don't follow Bobby Burack, fix that today, right now. But I want to be clear about something. Bobby won the battle at Gettysburg. I've been fighting this civil war for more than a decade. Bobby showed up with a rifle and a musket and I appreciate it. But I've been firing a cannon, several of them. And I've been firing those cannons since before some of these ESPN analysts knew what a cannon was. And the beautiful irony, the very people who spent years calling me bitter, jealous, irrelevant, a sellout, an Uncle Tom. Those same people are now crediting me with destroying their most important fortress. You know what that tells me? They were listening the whole time. Let me walk you through what this war actually looked like. Because some of you joined the Fearless Soldiers just recently and you deserve the full history. This didn't start with Ryan Clark. This didn't start with Cam Newton. This started with a guy named Mark Shapiro in the early 2000s. He used to run ESPN. He wrapped his arms around Stephen A. Smith 20 years ago. He was the guy who fired me because I criticized Mike Lupica and Scoop Jackson for bojangling and being busybodies. My battle with the Worldwide Leader intensified when John Skipper took control. Skipper was the president of ESPN who brought me back to the network and then set me up as his minions orchestrated my failure at the undefeated. Skipper turned the network into a classroom, not a sports classroom, a critical race theory classroom. Under Skipper, ESPN stopped being about touchdowns and started being about transformation, social transformation, the kind that required you to feel guilty about being the wrong color before you were allowed to enjoy a football game. I was inside ESPN when all this happened. I had a front row seat to what was being built, and I said so loudly publicly at considerable personal costs. They ran me out. And then they turned the network over to Jemele Hill. Jemele Hill called the President of the United States a white supremacist from her ESPN platform. And ESPN's response? Little vacation, little time out. Come back when you're ready, Jemele.
This is what happens when you replace editorial standards with identity politics, when the color of your skin becomes your journalism credential. They called me a hater. Then came Maria Taylor threatening to leave ESPN because she was offended by Rachel Nichols' private thoughts. Maria Taylor taking a dump on Drew Brees because he believed in honoring the national anthem. The woman outraged because Stephen A. Smith made more money than her. This is what happens when feelings replace facts and grievance becomes a negotiating tool. They called me misogynist. Then they transformed Stephen A. Smith. The woke army captured him, slapped golden handcuffs on his wrist, and made him a social justice warrior for Black Lives Matter, and then gave him $100 million.