‘Sanctimonious’: NewsNation’s Leland Vittert Goes After Jake Tapper’s Coverage of Caitlin Clark

NewsNation host Leland Vittert went after CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Monday for covering Chennedy Carter’s attack against fellow WNBA player Caitlin Clark as a conversation about race.

After Carter shoved Clark to the floor and mouthed, “Bitch” during a WNBA game between Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky this past weekend, Vittert called out CNN’s coverage of the incident on his NewsNation show On Balance.

Taking aim at CNN’s chyron, which read, “Foul on WNBA’s Caitlin Clark Stirs Debate About Race, Privilege,” Vittert protested:

The CNN and MSNBC types, a few weeks ago, fell all over themselves about Caitlin Clark when she played for Iowa in March Madness. 20 million people plus tuned in to see her, but suddenly no-name players shove her and CNN does an entire segment, we kid you not. “Caitlin Clark,” and you can see it on the screen, “stirs debate about race and privilege.”

That Clark joined a professional league comprised mostly of Black players and fueled its sudden rise in popularity given her star power has indeed spawned a debate about race and privilege — as well as controversy. ESPN’s Pat McAfee had to apologize on Monday for casually referring to Clark as “one white bitch” while praising her on air.

Vittert played a clip of Tapper saying, “And I’m not saying this is my interpretation, but it’s part of the conversation out there that a lot of the league sees this White, straight woman coming in and being embraced by the United States of America, and maybe they’re not White and maybe they’re not straight and they think, ‘What the hell is this?'”

“That’s also just called racism,” Vitter shot back at Tapper’s interpretation of how many WNBA players might feel about Clark’s rise to fame. “It’s that simple. If there were multiple White women out there trying to take out the single Black player, the single successful Black athlete, there would be no debate.”

Vitter then posited that the CNN anchor “would be waving the racism flag. It would be exactly his interpretation, rather than the sanctimonious, ‘It’s not my interpretation, but people are saying it.’ But because it was a White player, well, then it’s a debate about race and privilege we must have.”

The intersection of race and American sports has long been fodder for the media. Tennis legend Arthur Ashe directly addressed it in his autobiography, and “The Great White Hope” has been a trope in the annals of boxing lore for decades, which seems an apt analogy here.

Watch above via NewsNation.