Former ESPN writer Jemele Hill is back at it again. The unabashed anti-Trump writer seemingly tweeted an assassination reference during last night’s State of the Union by President Trump. This isn’t Hill’s first time dabbling in controversy concerning the president. She openly called him a white supremacist when she was at ESPN, a story that exposed some double standards at the network. You could call Trump a racist, but get suspended for suggesting that the flagship network for sports journalism had become too political. Longtime host Linda Cohn was suspended for suggesting that the network’s shift towards politics and political correctness is partially responsible for the bleeding in subscriptions over the past five years. Since then, 10 million people have unsubscribed from ESPN. Hill was not fired, but she was removed from on-air broadcasting and later left and joined The Atlantic. She has zero regrets for calling Trump a white supremacist.
During the speech, Hill tweeted “get your hand out of my pocket,” when replying to Desus Nice, who hoped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) would interrupt the speech with an outburst. She has now deleted the tweet and for good reason. She was joking using an assassination reference. Someone reportedly shouted this at the Audubon Ballroom before Malcolm X was murdered in 1965; Malcolm had broken away from the Nation of Islam the previous year. The ruckus was meant to distract his bodyguards.
Via Fox News:
It all started when Showtime’s Desus Nice tweeted that he would like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to interrupt Trump’s speech by yelling, “Whose mans is this?”
Hill, who famously called Trump a “white supremacist” in 2017 before her exit from ESPN, is now a writer for The Atlantic. She responded to Nice with her own vision fof what the freshman lawmaker should shout.
“Nah, she gotta yell: GETCHO HAND OUT MY POCKET,” Hill tweeted.
While not everyone picked up on Hill’s comment, some history buffs realized it was a reference to assassination.
“That statement is a reference to what one of Malcolm X’s assassins yelled out before they killed the 1960s civil rights leader,” NewsBusters’ deputy research director Geoffrey Dickens wrote.
[…]
Radio host and author Clay Travis wrote, “So Jemele Hill has moved on from calling the president a white supremacist to now rooting for him to be assassinated during the state of the union. Yikes.”
What’s going to be the fallout from this?
At the media outlet that hired and immediately fired Kevin Williamson for his previous controversial discussions about abortion. Trying to figure out editorial leadership’s standards here.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 6, 2019