Pat McAfee insists that he’s been canceled by ‘both parties’

Pat McAfee, while appearing on his ESPN show he’s receiving $85 million to host, claimed he’s canceled.

And he said this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In the latest example of McAfee bringing criticism to his show – and this one somehow did not involve any conspiracy theories from Aaron Rodgers – the host of the self-titled “The Pat McAfee Show” went on a bizarre rant Monday that was met with head-scratching by some in the media.

Here’s the full transcript of McAfee’s remarks:

“Obviously, it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He had a dream. And I think LANK was one of the closest we’ve had to potentially that dream coming to fruition. So, let’s realize that as we look around that we’re maybe more close than we’ve ever been.

“And there’s an election about to take place next [sic] year where we need to remember that we are more close than we have ever been, and people could potentially try to drive us apart from the outside looking in.

“Now, as somebody who was canceled by both parties last week, both of them canceled me. Two political parties canceled me last week and we are still alive. Let’s remember we don’t need all the outside noise. All we need is a little bit of love. Which is what we have for all of the people who have good intentions every single day whenever they wake up, just like us. Now, with that being said, football is awesome.”

It’s an impressive feat to somehow weave a narrative connecting yourself to Martin Luther King Jr., but McAfee managed to somehow do just that.

As least publicly, McAfee has received no discipline from ESPN for allowing Rodgers to imply that ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel would be on the associates list of convicted late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, giving Rodgers the platform to go on another one of his unfiltered Covid rants and calling top ESPN executive Norby Williamson a “rat.”

McAfee did receive public backlash for those events, but claiming he’s canceled while he’s still doing his daily show is rather brazen.

Then, there’s deciding to deliver this message on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

McAfee’s LANK reference referred to his appearance before the CFP national championship game where he got the entire set to break down laughing as Rece Davis revealed what LANK – “Let all naysayers know” – meant, and avoided sabotaging his career.

Awful Announcing posted a clip of McAfee’s comments and it had 2,500 retweets as of Tuesday morning, including plenty of quote tweets.

Clarence Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tweeted: “Someone at ESPN needs to stand up to this bs.”

ESPN’s Sarah Spain posted: “We’ve officially removed all meaning from the word ‘cancelled.’”

Roy Bellamy of “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz” wrote: “This rant proves how much further we have to go.”