Remember when Aaron Rodgers guest-hosted Jeopardy!? A lot of people thought he was surprisingly pretty good at that. He was calm, collected, quietly smart. A lot has happened since then to disabuse people of that notion. He’s since outed himself as a vax skeptic who can’t be trusted to not start chaos. His latest antic? Bizarrely and baselessly suggesting late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel might be a former Jeffrey Epstein client. That turned into an all-out, inter-Disney employee war, which is far from over.
To recap: Last week, Rodgers went on The Pat McAfee Show, soon before the release of documents pertaining to Epstein’s case. The news prompted the footballer to say, perhaps in jest, perhaps not, “There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, who are hoping that list doesn’t come out.” Kimmel, as one can imagine, did not appreciate that and threatened legal action. Both McAfee and ESPN — owned, like The Jimmy Kimmel Show!, by Disney — apologized. Rodgers has kept stum. So has Kimmel, but that may change.
“This will go as far as Kimmel wants to take it,” a source close to McAfee’s show told Front Office Sports. “[Kimmel] is the non-cartoon face of Disney. … Jimmy Kimmel Live! is five days a week, 52 weeks a year. He prints money for Disney. … He’s also a very sensitive guy.”
Worried as McAfee and ESPN are of Kimmel launching an inter-Disney employee war, that won’t stop them from bringing Rodgers back on the show.
“Pat announced today that he’s planning on Aaron joining the show Tuesday. Aaron made a dumb and factually inaccurate joke about Jimmy Kimmel,” said Mike Foxx, ESPN senior vice president of digital and studio production. “The show will continue to evolve. It wouldn’t surprise me if Aaron’s role evolves with it.”
Seems like a smart idea to keep bringing on a loose cannon who could create massive legal trouble for everyone. Maybe he’ll accuse another totally random celebrity of another unspeakably awful thing.
(Via Front News Sports)