On Monday morning, ESPN anchor Sage Steele found herself in the unenviable position of being the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter after she put up an Instagram post about how she missed a flight late Sunday due to the people at Los Angeles International Airport protesting Donald Trump's Muslim travel ban.
And while it's one thing to irritate the masses on social media, it's another to draw a public response from one of your own colleagues over an IG post. But that's exactly what happened later Monday morning when Steele's fellow ESPN employee Dan Le Batard responded to her post during his national radio show. After taking a bit of a dump on his employer for sending out a "weak" memo about how ESPN hosts were supposed to address Trump's travel ban on the air, Le Batard said he wouldn't be following the memo and then ripped Steele over her controversial social media post.
"The genie is out of the bottle on this because we all have our own Twitter accounts and all have our own social media,"Â LeBatard said, according to Slice Miami. "This is what ESPN is trying to prevent because once one person does it, it opens the floodgates for the rest of us, because of course, I, as the son of exiles, look at this and Iâm like, 'What the hell are you talking about [that] your travel plans were affected? What are you talking about?' It's the height of privilege...But you canât give this a voice and then muzzle the rest of us. You canât give Sage Steele this voice and muzzle the son of exile."
As you may know, LeBatard has not been shy about calling out his employer before.
It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, The Worldwide Leader decides to do about Le Batard's comments. They might actually steer clear of punishing him since it would only serve to bring more attention to Steele's situation. But it seems like they will need to speak up against one of the two parties here. Stay tuned to see how they handle it.
