Following a three-week hiatus, “The Jason Lee Show” is back with its 11th episode, and this week, HU Founder Jason Lee is joined by journalist Jemele Hill. The sports host and commentator, who released her tell-all memoir, “Uphill,” back in October, certainly had a lot to discuss with Lee following her own fair share of controversies in recent years.
The book, similar to the interview, sees Hill talk candidly about her life growing up in Michigan, being exposed to drugs at a young age due to her mother’s substance abuse, and overcoming dark times in her childhood, which ultimately made her the person she is today.
Aside from discussing life growing up in Detroit, however, the 47-year-old also touched on the scrutiny that came with her decision to previously get an abortion, admitting that she was never someone who saw herself wanting to have children.
She even recalled being told she was a “baby killer” because she didn’t want to move ahead with the pregnancy, despite knowing that motherhood wasn’t for her. But if the obstacles she faced in her personal life weren’t already hard enough, Hill faced even more hard times when she found herself suspended from ESPN for calling former President Donald Trump a white supremacist.
The remarks were shared on Twitter and landed her in serious trouble with the company, which requested that she retract her comments. But because of her dislike for Trump and how she views him, she stood firmly behind her decision not to erase the tweets, which consequently led to her departure.
“Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists,” the tweet shared in September 2017 read. When asked by Lee whether she expected to receive so much attention for her comments about Trump, she said, “No, I did not. Because those were reply tweets.
“It wasn’t like I tweeted, ‘@Donald Trump you are a white supremacist, it wasn’t that. I was in an argument with a Twitter follower who was providing way too much cover and defense of Donald Trump. I never expected the tweets to take off the way that they did.”
Later on during their chat, Hill also weighed in on her thoughts about the NFL’s treatment of Colin Kaepernick, who she believes hate him for going against the organization in the way that he did.
As most will remember, the former NFL star infamously knelt during the national anthem at the start of a game in protest of police brutality and racial inequality in the U.S.
He went on to opt out of the final season of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers after being benched for the majority of the time following the scandal that erupted with his decision to kneel during the national anthem.
He and fellow player Eric Reid went on to sue the NFL for collusion grievances and reportedly received a combined figure of less than $10 million to settle the matter with the organization and hadn’t been re-hired ever since.
Hill seems to think that there’s no chance the NFL would ever want to work with Kaepernick again for how he went about his decision to protest before a game back in 2016.
“Jay-Z is power beyond measure, but he ain’t gonna tell white billionaires what to do. They not gonna do it,” she explained, alluding that even with a man of Hova’s power and influence in the NFL, he’s not going to call the shots on the wealthy men running the organization. “They resent Colin,” she added.
“They hate Colin. They like never, on their dying breath, they’re not going to let this man back in the league because they feel like he stepped outside of an order that they felt like they had explicitly established.”
“The order of conformity. And no, that’s unforgivable to them.”
Catch the full interview on REVOLT TV on Tuesday at 10 PM EST and Wednesday on YouTube’s REVOLT at 5 PM EST!
