Jemele Hill blindsided by Trump ‘white supremacist’ backlash: ‘I thought I was saying water is wet’

Calling President Trump a “white supremacist” is too obvious even to be controversial, according to a former ESPN host.

Jemele Hill, who was fired from the sports network after repeated violations of its social-media guidelines, made the comments on a new ESPN podcast network.

“I thought I was saying water is wet. I didn’t even think it was controversial,” Ms. Hill said on the first episode of Dan Le Batard’s “South Beach Sessions,” a part of the sports network’s Le Batard and Friends Podcast Network.

Ms. Hill, who now works for the liberal Atlantic magazine, said on the podcast that she thought “we” had “all decided” that the president was a white supremacist and that she was just making small talk on Twitter.

“If I was really trying to make a bold statement, I would have added the damn president. I didn’t, I was just talking casually with somebody,” she said. “It wasn’t even original. That’s what is so crazy. I got famous for saying something that wasn’t original. It wasn’t new. It was not breaking news. I thought we all decided this after Charlottesville.”

Ms. Hill also has called Mr. Trump a “bigot” and “unqualified and unfit to be president.”

But according to Mr. Le Batard, a longtime friend of hers, she is simply an “accidental activist” and a passionate journalist.

According to an account of the podcast in the New York Post, Ms. Hill called complaints that ESPN had engaged in too much left-wing politicking “truly stupid.”