ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro personally reached out to Jimmy Kimmel after New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers alleged connections between the late-night talk show host and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” last Tuesday, per longtime ESPN chronicler James Andrew Miller.
Pitaro reached out to Kimmel to ease tensions after he responded to Rodgers’ allegations on X.
“Jimmy Pitaro did call Jimmy Kimmel and did a pretty good job, I believe, of talking him down,” Miller said on ‘Sports Media with Richard Deitsch’ released Tuesday, via Awful Announcing. “The two of them had a really constructive conversation. But the way that that was left, it could have been a terrible situation … if let’s say Jimmy Kimmel decided to send a note to Bob Iger and said, ‘next week, only one of [Kimmel or McAfee] is going to be on the air. You tell me which one of us it’s going to be.’”
In his original comments, Rodgers intimated that Kimmel would appear on the list of associates tied to Epstein, who committed suicide inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in August 2019. Rodgers notably made the statement on an ESPN broadcast, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company, who also owns ABC, which airs “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
In his first show back from the holidays Monday, Kimmel further responded to the allegations from the four-time NFL MVP.
Jimmy Kimmel goes in on Aaron Rodgers during monologue
“Did you hear this story about me and Aaron Rodgers, the former quarterback for the Packers?” Kimmel said. “All right, so, what happened is he’s a Jets quarterback now. He went on a show on ESPN, ‘The Pat McAfee Show,’ and out of the blue insinuated that I was nervous because the Jeffrey Epstein list was coming out. He said I was hoping it wouldn’t, and that he was going to pop a bottle of something to celebrate when he did.
“And then it did come out and of course my name wasn’t on it and isn’t on it and won’t ever be on. I don’t know Jeffrey Epstein, I’ve never met Jeffrey Epstein, I’m not on the list, I wasn’t on a plane or an island or anything ever and I suggested that if Aaron wanted to make false and very damaging statements like that that we should do it in court so he could share his proof with like a judge. Because, you know, when you hear a guy who won a Super Bowl and did all the State Farm commercials say something like this, a lot of people believe it.”
Aaron Rodgers responds to Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue
During his appearance on McAfee’s show Tuesday, Rodgers thoroughly discussed Kimmel’s monologue from the night prior.
“I’m not stupid enough, even though you think I’m an idiot, and you made a lot of comments about my intelligence, but I’m not stupid enough to accuse you of that without absolutely zero concrete evidence. That’s ridiculous,” Rodgers said. “So I’m glad, and I think we can agree on something, is that one, those crimes are heinous, and two, I’m glad you’re not on the list. Because those who are on the list, and this one I think we can agree on, at minimum, there should be an inquiry into their involvement, especially if they went to the island.
“At maximum, there should be an investigation into it. So I hope that you’ll give the same type of energy to these heinous crimes when they do come out, and the names do come out, and there is an inquiry into it, that you gave to other subjects that I actually mentioned, that you spent a lot of time working on. So I’d like to put this to bed, to move forward.”
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