Jemele Hill regrets that her comments about President Trump being a white supremacist became national headlines and turned ESPN into a target for the right.
In an essay she wrote for The Undefeated, published Wednesday, the SportsCenter anchor said she let her bosses and colleagues down, and for that she felt awful.
“Twitter wasn’t the place to vent my frustrations because, fair or not, people can’t or won’t separate who I am on Twitter from the person who co-hosts the 6 p.m. SportsCenter,” Hill wrote. “Twitter also isn’t a great place to have nuanced, complicated discussions, especially when it involves race.”
Still, she did not take back anything she said about Trump.
“Also, let me be clear about something else: My criticisms of the president were never about politics. In my eyes, they were about right and wrong,” she wrote. “I love this country. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t want it to be better.”
Hill, who is coming up on her 11-year anniversary at the sports network, created a firestorm with her Twitter comments about Trump, which the White House said should have gotten the TV personality fired.
Those who stuck up for Hill pointed out that Trump, while hosting The Apprentice, was wildly critical of President Obama, specifically questioning whether he was born in the U.S.
There were some reports that ESPN looked to take Hill off the air during the controversy, but the network pushed back on those, saying they weren’t true.
In a memo to all employees, ESPN president John Skipper said Hill’s tweet violated company policy, which was essentially: stick to sports on social media.
Hill said her Twitter issue was a “lesson learned,” but she will still speak her mind.
“I do know that we’re clearly living in a time of blurred lines,” she wrote. “The president’s recent inflammatory attacks on NFL players, his choice to disinvite the Golden State Warriors to the White House, are just the latest examples of silence being impossible. This is not a time for retreating comfortably to a corner.”
