NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 20: Charly Arnolt attends the premiere of Universal Pictures’s “Bros” at AMC Lincoln Square Theater on September 20, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images,)
Former ESPN sportscaster Charly Arnolt has criticized her former employers over their transgender coverage, including an on-air tribute to Lia Thomas.
The network’s Sam Ponder was among ESPN personalities to lash out at the Biden Administration’s decision to empower trans women keen on participating in women’s sports, taking to Twitter to dunk on Lia’s plea to the government for added protection.
Arnolt, who recently left ESPN and is now employed at Outkick, did an interview with FOX News in which she called the Worldwide Leader in Sports’ political stance into question, based on the above.
She wasted no time going at ESPN!https://t.co/gEgJ3wskTo
— TPS (@TotalProSports) April 21, 2023
“ESPN has been very adamant about keeping politics out of their programming, yet you just saw late last month, they did a whole tribute during women’s month for Lia Thomas,” she said. “Therefore it doesn’t exactly seem like they are keeping politics completely out of the mix.
The 35-year-old also claimed she felt stifled at ESPN, while insisting that cancel culture does not exist at Outkick.
“I’m a very opinionated person — I always have been,” sne explained. “That’s something I really love about myself and I just felt like at ESPN I was a little bit stifled. There was a lot of conversations and issues that have really just permeated the world of sports and really just society in general that I was not able to speak up about.
“And it made me very uncomfortable, because I felt like I wasn’t being true to myself. Then there’s a place like OutKick, that really, the idea of cancel culture does not exist. You have a guy like Clay Travis who really stands behind everyone who works at the company.”
Fans on Twitter were all over the place on this one. You could check some of the reactions out right below:
Lol cancel culture doesn’t exist at outkick even though they’ve spent weeks talking about cancelling bud light
— wolfstansson (@wolfstansson1) April 20, 2023
Outkick is the king of cancel culture. Just anything they don't agree with. Oh…. the hypocrisy
— Darth Vaper 🗽 (@TrumpsRump5) April 22, 2023
That statement is easily verified to be false
— William Hendricks (@wlhconcertfan) April 20, 2023
She’s a dime
— Tombstone Frank (@tombstone_frank) April 20, 2023
Unless you're Colin Kapernick, Bud Light, Nike, Disney, or any other company that has dissenting political views.
— Ickybod Crane (@IckybodC) April 20, 2023
Pretty easy to have the people you employ come out and say good things about the company they work for
— Write your purpose in pen and your path in pencil (@TOTater) April 20, 2023
A former wrestler with WWE, she joined ESPN in 2018, making appearances on various shows, including the popular First Take, as well as SportsNation. She made her debut as a fight interviewer for the company during a UFC event last July but is now heading in another direction.
