Far-left talking head Keith Olbermann has been getting pummeled on Twitter for trying to connect a story about a hero student who died after charging at the Michigan high school shooter this week to what Olbermann termed the “Trumpist Fascism” of the shooter’s mother — as well as Barstool Sports and its founder, Dave Portnoy.
What are the details?
Barstool Sports ran a story Wednesday about Tate Myre — a 16-year-old football player for Oxford High School — who was killed after reportedly charging at and trying to disarm the fellow student who also fatally shot two other classmates.
After Barstool posted a tweet about the piece, Olbermann barged in and — with a handful of words — essentially stole the spotlight from Myre by making the story about former President Donald Trump and the alleged “Trumpist Fascism” of the shooter’s mother, Barstool Sports, and Portnoy.
He followed that up with a tweet highlighting excerpts from a Daily Beast story that points a finger at the shooter’s parents.
How did folks react?
Olbermann’s accusatory tweet to his nearly 1 million followers elicited a massive “ratio” — meaning that comments (about 11,000 as of Thursday morning) far outnumbered likes (about 5,700 as of Thursday morning).
While a number of folks actually agreed with Olbermann, many commenters were angry at and disgusted with the leftist pundit — including Portnoy himself:
Here’s a sampling of the rest of the outrage directed toward Olbermann:
- “WTF??? I don’t even know what to say,” one user said. “This young man literally gave his life to protect others, and you are trying to make it political. It’s disgusting.”
- “How do you still have a Twitter account?” another commenter asked. “Oh that’s right, you’re leftist scum, and it’s allowed.”
- “You are the epitome of what is making this nation SICK, SICK, SICK,” another user noted. “You cannot grasp that a huge swath of Americans DON’T believe your utter BS. You want that click so badly, you beclown yourself w/your disgusting rhetoric.”
- “You need some serious help,” another commenter said. “Will wait for you to echo the same for the murders during the parade in Wisconsin influenced by the other side of the political aisle that you and your liberal so-called media colleagues continue to ignore and refer to as [an] ‘accident.’ But you won’t.”
- “Keith—psychopaths like yourself are the reason Trump won the presidency and the same reason he’ll be in the White House again,” another user declared. “You’re an out of touch, virtue signaling piece of s**t. Thx bye.”
Olbermann doubles down
For all of Olbermann’s faults, he’s not one to shy away from the spotlight or criticism — and amid the firestorm around him, he simply doubled down:
Image source: Twitter (redacted)
And previous to his tweet about “Trumpist Fascism,” Olbermann posted the following:
Anything else?
As you probably already know, this wasn’t the first time Olbermann elicited large-scale outrage:
- In October he posted a ranting video on Twitter in which he ripped unvaccinated people as “snowflakes,” “morons,” “losers,” and “cowards.”
- In March Olbermann got clobbered for asking on Twitter, “Why are we wasting vaccinations on Texas if Texas has decided to join the side of the virus?”
- Last year he lashed out at Ted Cruz over a photo of the U.S. senator with a deer he just hunted and killed: “You’re not a human being, Cruz. You’re a human-shaped pile of dung.”
- Just after the 2020 election, Olbermann shared video of one of his infamous rants and added a caption that read in part, “TRUMP MUST BE REMOVED AND ARRESTED, TONIGHT.”
- Weeks prior to the election he said Trump supporters “must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society.”