Sportscaster Bob Costas’s tendency to wax poetic in a gratuitous manner is so well known, it has become a meme. During a Monday speech at Syracuse University’s Mirror Awards, Costas was at it again, invoking Thomas Jefferson to compare supporting President Donald Trump to disbelieving in a round earth and telling anyone who objects to such insults that he doesn’t care what you think and, in fact, considers your criticism to be a “badge of honor.”
In cellphone video captured by liberal writer Rachel Sklar, Costas declared, “Thomas Jefferson once said, if I should be able, I’m paraphrasing here, if I should be able to retain only one of the amendments of the Constitution, it’s the first one, the right to a free press, because that’s the safeguard of democracy, and which does not mean we are without fault. It does not mean that the legacy or mainstream media doesn’t screw up from time to time or have blind spots or misplaced narratives, but if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump’s view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals, there are no principles at work other than what benefits him. I’ll stay with where we are without correction if the correction is what Donald Trump represents.”
Not only does Costas not like Trump, but he also does not like that people who disagree with him are allowed to be on TV, “And what has also happened here is that because he is the president, to a certain extent, who he is and what he does, and what is done in his name has been normalized so that responsible journalists have to pretend there’s always two sides of this. There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents. If someone says, and the idea that you have to find, you have to find somebody who will not just defend Donald Trump, but valorize it, even on CNN or wherever else just in the name of being balanced.”
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