Over the course of the past decade, there haven’t been many voices in sports media who have been more critical of Donald Trump than Dan Le Batard.
But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, there was a time when the now-President of the United States was a reoccurring guest on Le Batard’s eponymous show.
To celebrate the Fourth of July, the podcast version of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz revisited those times, re-releasing the interviews in four separate episodes. Le Batard shared the show’s plans during Thursday’s episode, providing no indication that this was some sort of bit.
“I believe that as part of our Fourth of July celebration —we’re off tomorrow — I believe we’re playing all our Trump interviews to celebrate America,” Le Batard said.
That the show did, with executive producer Chris Cote providing an introduction to the interviews, which were then narrated together by producer Jeremy Taché.
“When I think of America folks, I think of one thing. It’s the same thing you’re thinking of: I think of Donald Trump,” Cote said in the intro of the first episode. “We’re here. Who’d of thunk it? Who’d have thought that I would be thinking and associating America with Donald Trump? And believe it or not, many, many years ago, before he was president of this great country, he joined our show back when he was just a blowhard game show host, billionaire. He was a friend of the show.
“And it was a different time, folks, that’s the only way I can explain it. We had no clue at the time that he would be president one day. We had no clue at the time all the things he would say and people he would offend. But here we are and it’s time to relive it… I just encourage you to think back and think to yourself while listening to these interviews, who’d of thunk that this guy would someday be president? But here we are.”
Picking up the episode’s narration, Taché made it clear he wasn’t thrilled with the assignment, sarcastically stating, “thank you for putting me in this position to have to listen to all this audio and lead everyone through it. Thanks for nothing. I f**king hate it.”
The three separate interviews range from November 2013-May 2015, the last of which came just 20 days before Trump officially announced his candidacy for the 2016 election. This isn’t the first time that the Le Batard Show has revisited its once-friendly relationship with the eventual 45th and 47th president; in fact, the same interviews were the focus of the very first episode of Meadowlark Media’s Pablo Torre Finds Out.
While Le Batard’s feelings about Trump have clearly shifted in the decade since their last interview, there is something undeniably unique about the fact that the show possesses three previous interviews with the current U.S. president. But if the comments on the Le Batard Show subreddit and social media are indication, many in the show’s fanbase weren’t thrilled with Friday’s slate of episodes — especially considering the current news cycle— with even going as far as to unsubscribe to the podcast and/or leave negative reviews.
On the one hand, such platforms typically lend themselves to the most vocal of critics, but on the other, it’s hard to ignore the overwhelming nature of the negative feedback. As such, it will be interesting to see if and how Le Batard addresses the criticism, especially considering his own political leanings.
