Barstool Sports Host Excoriates Boss Dave Portnoy for Softball Interview With Trump: We Were ‘Used for a Political Race’

Barstool Sports host Dan Katz, known as “Big Cat,” excoriated his boss Dave Portnoy for his softball interview with President Donald Trump, which was released Friday afternoon.

Katz ripped Portnoy for involving him into politics when all he wanted to do was “make people laugh” and said the company was “used for a political race” on his radio show Friday. He also mentioned how a couple of months ago, Barstool was reportedly approached to interview Joe Biden and they declined.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the president’s office reached out to Barstool four months before an election when he’s polling at his worst spot,” he said. “Again, I don’t want to do talk about politics, but I’m forced to.”

Katz said he didn’t know Portnoy was interviewing Trump until he saw it on social media and people texted him about it.

“He blatantly said I do not care what Dan thinks about this,” Katz said. “If we would have sat down about it, I might have landed on ‘You have to do the interview.’ … When you interview the president four months before an election, you can’t say we don’t do politics and we’re staying straight down the middle. It’s impossible. That ship sailed. If that’s what we wanted to do, that’s OK. But I thought I was a partner and my opinion mattered.”

“It’s been a tough 12 hours or whatever it’s been trying to understand where I fit in now,” he continued. “There’s only two explanations. One is they didn’t want to talk to me because I would probably be the only dissenting view, which means that when there’s tough decisions to be made and Dan might disagree we just won’t ask him so we don’t have to hear his view. That means my opinion doesn’t matter. Or two, they just said straight up his opinion doesn’t matter. Either way, my opinion does not matter at this company the way I thought it did 12 hours ago.”

In the interview, Trump and Portnoy joked about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, talked about day trading, and discussed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s first pitch at Nationals Stadium on Thursday. While Trump did hit on more serious topics like the Black Lives Matter movement and deploying DHS agents in Portland, Katz said Portnoy didn’t take it “seriously” and wouldn’t ask follow-up questions.

Portnoy, the founder of Barstool, is a occasional Fox News guest with a controversial past. Videos have circulated of him using the N-word and other racist and misogynistic language. On Twitter, he’s also fought with journalists and celebrities like The Daily Beast’s Robert Silverman and Jemele Hill.

Still, Portnoy’s cult-following has garnered millions for him and Barstool, where it’s primary audience comes from its social accounts and well-known podcast hosts, like Katz.

“Dave has always been about comedy first,” Katz said. “Barstool is, for better or worse, it is Dave and it is me. When you think of Barstool, you think the two of us. I’m basically thrust into now talking about politics, being asked about politics, and I had zero say in it. That’s not fair. That’s not right. So I’m in a spot right now where I don’t know what to do. For the first time in my career at Barstool, I don’t know what to do.”

Watch above, via Barstool Radio.