The usual suspects in sports media are upset over a new interview between college football commentator Josh Pate and President Donald Trump.
Even before the interview aired, Dan Le Batard’s notoriously low-IQ producer Mike Ryan tried to shame Pate.
"This is a real issue for sports in general," Ryan said. "When you have shows like this, you are further normalizing something that is not normal … when you give Donald Trump a platform, he is going to seize the opportunity to espouse lies, election denial, and do whatever he can."
Notably, "The Dan Le Batard Show" was the first program to interview Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, during her campaign after a report alleged he had slapped his ex-girlfriend. The show did not ask Emhoff about the allegation.
Critics also accused Pate of breaking his pledge to keep politics off his program. Yet, upon review, he did. The interview aired Sunday and focused exclusively on college football.
As we argued when Pat McAfee interviewed Trump in November and faced similar backlash, interviewing the president is not inherently political. A conversation with the sitting president is a privilege, regardless of party affiliation.
When you have an opportunity to interview the most powerful elected official in the country, you take it. Anyone arguing otherwise is the one prioritizing partisan politics.
There is nothing wrong with or political about a sports host discussing sports with a president.
Notice that no one had an issue with the many times that ESPN interviewed Barack Obama while he was in office, and when the NBA and NBC celebrated Obama at the NBA All-Star Game earlier this month.
What was political was ESPN analyst Mina Kimes publicly endorsing Karen Bass and Tim Walz for office on, wait for it, "The Dan Le Batard Show."
Of course, Kimes was not subjected to the same level of vitriol as Pate. According to the cool kids of sports media, mixing politics with sports is only okay if you share the right beliefs with the right politicians.
Pate, however, is not one of the cool kids. He's too popular to need approval from his peers and bloggers. By comparison, Pate’s live episodes on YouTube draw roughly five times as many views as Le Batard's live shows.
We predicted in December that Pate could follow a trajectory similar to Pat McAfee, leveraging his independent brand into an expanded partnership with ESPN.
The fact that Trump chose to sit down with him on social media to discuss college football highlights Pate’s growth and influence. No wonder the Mike Ryan types are so triggered by him.
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