Former ESPN colleagues Keith Olbermann and Sage Steele ignited a media dustup after Steele complained about the network’s handling of an interview with President Joe Biden.
Olbermann, who hosts the “Countdown” podcast, reacted to the interview Steele did with Fox News Digital this week. She told the outlet her 2021 ESPN discussion with Biden was scripted by the sports network, and she was not allowed to “deviate.”
“Of COURSE it was scripted,” Olbermann wrote Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “If it hadn’t have been @sagesteele - the dumbest person I’ve ever worked with in sports or news ― couldn’t have gotten through it.”
Minutes later, Olbermann issued another barbed message on X:
“I mean Jesus, if this happened to you, you’d just assume it WASN’T being done to protect the network from your humiliating it - and yourself?”
Steele responded Thursday on X by recalling that Olbermann once got ESPN bosses to plead with her to move SportsCenter from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., to New York City for a night so Olbermann could fill in as a co-host. “Keith couldn’t leave his 26 dogs for a night to do the show in Bristol! So cute!!” she wrote.
In her Fox News interview, Steele not only blasted the network for allegedly controlling her ahead of the Biden interview ― “It was very much ‘This is what you will ask. This is how you will say it. No follow-ups’ ” ― she also said she suspected that the White House was sent the questions in advance. Some of them revolved around athletes and vaccine protocols ahead of Major League Baseball’s opening day.
The conservative former anchor also piled on to current claims about Biden’s mental acuity, saying it was “heartbreaking” to see his condition.
Olbermann began his second stint at ESPN in 2018 and he resigned in 2020 to focus on political commentary.
Steele parted from ESPN in August 2023 after settling a lawsuit with the network claiming that her free-speech rights had been violated. Steele was removed from the network for 10 days in 2021 after calling ESPN/Disney’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate at the time “sick” and “scary.” She also questioned former President Barack Obama for identifying as Black. Last month she launched her podcast, “The Sage Steele Show.”