After Donald Trump became president in 2016, it was big news any time an athlete or sports media personality confronted or criticized him. ESPN commentator Jemele Hill was suspended for calling Trump a white supremacist, while Steph Curry turned down a trip to the White House and LeBron James called Trump a “bum” on social media. But as the country heads toward a third consecutive presidential election with Trump on the ticket, longtime ESPN personality Pablo Torre believes nobody really cares whether sports figures attack Trump.
Torre, who is now only part-time at ESPN, also works at Meadowlark Media, and recently became a regular contributor to Morning Joe on MSNBC, said recently that audiences have a “numbness” to Trump being controversial. He said now it’s baked into the conversation around Trump that many media personalities dislike him.
In an interview on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast released Thursday, Torre explained how the floodgates have opened for all-out political diatribes from sports pundits, as well as how he navigates those waters working at both ESPN and MSNBC.
“I don’t worry about it, which is something that’s unthinkable to the old me,” Torre said. “Like, I’m going to talk about Donald Trump regularly and not worry about what ESPN is going to say to me. Because of [my] contract, but also because I think the one wrinkle in this election cycle that’s different form the previous one is it feels like here’s just a numbness to the the idea that Trump is this character and people are very mad at him.”
Torre said while it used to make news when Hill or Torre’s new Meadowlark boss Dan Le Batard went after Trump, this year it will hardly make noise.
“Where before, it was like, ‘I wonder if an ESPN personality is going to break the seal and say what they really think,’ everybody kind of knows how everybody feels right now,” Torre said. “So the idea of, ‘Guess what happened, Pablo Torre criticized Trump on MSNBC,’ it’s like ‘Of course he did.’ Stephen A. Smith said he was a better presidential candidate than Trump, it’s like ‘Of course he did.'”
Stephen A. Smith frequently comments on politics on his side project podcast or various cable news programs, while Aaron Rodgers joins The Pat McAfee Show weekly on ESPN and often discusses political and social issues. Whereas ESPN talent used to have to toe the line when it came to social media posts, those hardly make a sound now.
Torre believes the same will extended to athletes and other sports figures. The controversy around Trump and supporting him has become more normal, as has hate toward him on the other side.
“In ways that people aren’t ready for,” Torre said, “the oxygen in the room is going to be directed toward this wildly, wildly awful this conversation we’re all going to have, in which people are going to dislike each other and athletes will say things that they’re going to get in trouble for, but probably not as much.”
The normalization of being for and against Trump is part of why the 2024 campaign could get so ugly, Torre added. People are exhausted leading into a potential rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden. Still, the past decade has shown there is no limit to how crazy the story around America’s most controversial figure can get.
“It’s not as exotic or novel now, that’s definitely true,” Torre said. “But the freak show can always get weirder. And there might just be something that happens … and it’s like, ‘And now we’re all talking about this thing.'”
Torre is expecting so much madness that everyone will feel compelled to chime in, with fewer consequences than before.
