ESPN’s Jemele Hill caused quite a bit of controversy on Twitter on Monday when she sent out a string of anti-Donald Trump tweets. Those tweets, which were mostly directed at Trump supporters, featured Hill referring to Trump as a "white supremacist" and "a bigot."
By Tuesday, some people on social media were calling for Hill to lose her job at ESPN over the things she said about Trump. ESPN responded by releasing a statement on the situation and distancing themselves from the comments Hill made.
That statement only seemed to make things worse for Hill. While many of her fellow ESPN employees and even pro athletes like Colin Kaepernick and Dwyane Wade showed their support for Hill late Tuesday and into Wednesday, the backlash against Hill reached a fever pitch by Wednesday afternoon. At one point, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Hill’s tweets, and she called them "outrageous" and said that she felt Hill sending them out was "a fireable offense."
It doesn’t appear as though ESPN is going to go as far as to completely cut ties with Hill. But late Wednesday—just a few hours after Hill co-hosted ESPN’s SC6 as usual, without speaking on the controversy surrounding her—Hill and ESPN both released statements to address the issue.
Hill went first and released a brief statement on Twitter to "address the elephant in the room." In her statement, she seemed to stand pat on the things she said about Trump, but she also said that she regrets how her comments "painted ESPN in an unfair light." She added, "My respect for the company and my colleagues remains unconditional."
A short time later, ESPN also sent out a statement and said that while they feel Jemele "has a right to her personal opinions," they did not appreciate that she "implies that she was in any way speaking on behalf of ESPN." However, the company added that Hill apologized for how she went about saying what she said about Trump—even though Hill didn't seem to apologize at all in her statement—and their statement ended with, "We accept her apology."
For what it’s worth, the original tweets that Hill sent out about Trump are still up, and it doesn’t appear as though Hill has any intention of taking them down. But for now, it doesn’t look like ESPN is going to discipline Hill over them or fire her as some people have suggested they do. It also doesn’t look like ESPN or Hill are going to comment any further on the situation in the hopes that it will blow over in the coming days.
