Almost a week after the Pittsburgh Steelers returned to Latrobe, Pa., for the team’s training camp, its veteran quarterback Aaron Rodgers is making news, but not the football kind. More the kind we conservatives like – he’s waging war on woke and the left in general.
Appearing live on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show, Rodgers tore into Anthony Fauci over his most recent testimony before the Senate and just about everything else Fauci has done over the past six years. Rodgers took no prisoners, which made everyone on the ESPN training camp set visibly uncomfortable. As a reminder, Disney owns ESPN and ABC.
When McAfee asked the first question of the interview, Rodgers said he’d "plead the Fifth" in a direct reference to the 111 times Fauci pleaded the Fifth Amendment last week when he testified before the Senate on the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m gonna plead the Fifth,” Rodgers said mockingly. “Like that absolute coward Tony Fauci. Absolute coward. Are you kidding me? You got a pardon and you pleaded over 100 times?” Then he asked, “What are you scared of, Tony? I thought you were ‘the science.’ And you get up there and you can’t answer a question?”
With the Steelers’ faithful in the background and serving as the live audience on the campus of St. Vincent College, Rodgers was just getting started. The crowd came alive once Rodgers went off script, so to speak, sending a clear message to the show hosts, producers and the network that Steelers fans don't mind a little Fauci-bashing. In fact, they kinda like it.
“How much time did the network spend, how much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor (Swift) and Travis’s (Kelce’s) wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci?... No, I bet they didn’t.”
Shifting gears, what Rodgers said next made everyone in Latrobe taking a paycheck from ESPN get a little nervous. That was when Rodgers took aim at the woke sports network.
“Then there was another scandal this off-season, too, involving a voter for MVP, for Coach of the Year… How much time did your network spend on that (now looking directly into the camera and pointing at it)?”
He then added, “You have literally an individual that maybe used to work at ESPN, that covers our league at the highest level, and there’s a major scandal and it’s just like nobody can f*****g talk about it.”
Rodgers was talking about the controversy over a married female pro football reporter’s unusually close relationship with the married head coach of the New England Patriots, Mike Vrabel. Dianna Russini, the reporter at the center of the story, is an NFL beat reporter for The Athletic, a New York Times media property.
Rodgers seemed less interested in the story’s romantic elements and more interested in how such relationships can influence news coverage and player and coach honors and awards.
At that point, the other panelists off-camera almost in unison immediately asked Rodgers to “get back to Fauci,” changing the subject and clearly trying to take the heat off of both McAfee and ESPN.
Rodgers took them up on the suggestion, elaborating on Fauci and how he was “writin’ in his diary all the time about how fun it is to be famous. You gotta be kiddin’ me.”
After that, Rodgers went on a rant in which he slammed those who have attacked him in recent years, saying they have less to work with now, mostly because he and those of us on team sanity were right all along. He reminded the audience that COVID came from a lab in China, and then he turned back to his attacks on Fauci.
McAfee, as any good broadcaster would do at this point, realized he had lost all control and just told Rodgers he had four minutes “to the hard out,” which signaled to Rodgers, the producers, and the others on set that Rodgers was in the driver’s seat here, and they were just going to run with this.
The Steelers QB decided to use most of that time directly and indirectly attacking the overly sensitive and supremely woke producers and executives at the sports network and sports media in general.
What I love about this interview is its very context. Rodgers, for all intents and purposes, is in his last NFL season, ending what is surely a Hall of Fame career. He’s got his Super Bowl ring and enough money to last the rest of his life. He doesn't have a lot left to prove on the football field, though I have to admit, sitting here in Steelers country, that another Pittsburgh Super Bowl trophy would be nice.
In any event, after the misery that the leftist sports media and the leftist NFL put him through during COVID and since, he has zero fudgesicles to give. Someone in that position is sure to be good copy for reporters.
He’s making it known that he’s going to have fun on the field, and off the field he’s dead set on working to get in the last word. And he’s targeting everyone who came after him. After watching and enjoying every minute of this interview, I can already tell I’m going to love Rodgers’ farewell tour this football season.
Here’s the full interview.
Reader’s Note: Find out what you’re missing behind the members-only wall. It’s time for you to take advantage of the full catalogue of common-sense thinking that comes with a PJ Media VIP membership. You’ll get access to content you didn’t even know you wanted, and you’ll be hooked. The good news is, PJ Media VIP memberships are on sale! Get 60% off of an annual VIP, VIP Gold, or VIP Platinum membership! Use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off a VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member