With the NFL regular season wrapping up, Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays on The Pat McAfee Show will be over soon. Not to be forgotten, Rodgers kicked off the new calendar year with a bizarre interview hitting on all the typical subjects, including big pharma, the Jeffrey Epstein client list, and a conspiracy related to the Super Bowl LXI logo.
Rodgers spoke fairly sincerely about his mental health journey and how he has bonded with fans through it. After Rodgers mentioned the use of ayahuasca to find purpose and connect with himself, McAfee asked him to elaborate. Rodgers said while many people find benefits from the substance, the medical field wants to restrict it.
“There’s a lot of great clinics, and the alphabet gangsters who control a lot of the medicine … aren’t exactly on board with giving a lot of clearance to this stuff yet,” Rodgers said.
Aaron Rodgers warns ESPN's audience about "the alphabet gangsters" in the medical field pic.twitter.com/znfAjY8w8i
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 2, 2024
Rodgers has long railed against big pharma, frequently on The Pat McAfee Show.
He then turned his sights toward a similar pet topic on the program: conspiracy theories.
When a potential rematch from 2013 in this year’s Super Bowl came up in conversation, Rodgers whipped up a hard-to-follow point about the color scheme and numerology on the Super Bowl LVIII logo. Even the provocateur producer BostonConnr tried to deter the conversation.
To wrap the segment, McAfee prodded Rodgers about the potential upcoming unsealing of the Jeffrey Epstein client list.
“A lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said out of left field.
Aaron Rodgers caps off a busy Pat McAfee Show spot by addressing a Super Bowl logo-based conspiracy and again suggesting ABC host Jimmy Kimmel will be on the Jeffrey Epstein client list… pic.twitter.com/eQ62mbVSbM
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 2, 2024
Earlier this year, Rodgers and Kimmel sparred over Kimmel making fun of Rodgers’ interest in the Epstein files. In return, Rodgers, former teammate David Bakhtiari, and most of the conservative media then accused Kimmel of being defensive because he was on the list himself. There is no public link between Kimmel and Epstein.
Regardless, it’s pretty wild that either of these issues came up during the ESPN-syndicated portion of McAfee. On ESPN today, the quarterback of the New York Jets insinuated that the medical profession is made up of LGBTQ conspiracists and that parent company Disney’s most famous host is a pedophile.
Rodgers may not know it, but “alphabet gangsters” (or “mafia”) is not in reference to a PhD or MD. It is a common insult to lob toward “woke” liberal types to generalize them all as LGBTQ.
And the strange Super Bowl logo conspiracy made even BostonConnr blush. McAfee had to clean up the Kimmel jab.
None of this is especially new from Rodgers on McAfee. Everyone has an opinion about the whole arrangement by now. But at some point, it seems Rodgers could cross the ESPN line if he continues to toe it as hard as he does.
[The Pat McAfee Show on YouTube]
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.