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Black Twitter wants to trade actor Terry Crews for ESPN's Max Kellerman after his comment on SEC football fans

On Thursday, Kellerman, talking about the ongoing protests in the NBA and canceled practices in the NFL, said Trump’s voters in SEC football “seem to be susceptible to very low-quality information, and easy to propagandize"

On Thursday, August 27, Max Kellerman was trending on Twitter. The sports television personality and the co-host of the ESPN talk show ‘First Take’ alongside Stephen A. Smith and Molly Qerim, on Thursday, had some things to say on his show. 

Talking about the ongoing protests in the NBA and canceled practices -- in light of the Kenosha, Wisconsin shootings -- in the NFL, Kellerman said that President Donald Trump’s base voters in the SEC -- NCAA Southeastern Conference Football -- “seem to be susceptible to very low-quality information, and easy to propagandize and almost immune to facts”.

Speaking to Smith on the show, Kellerman said, “You made the argument a couple weeks ago, you thought if SEC football wasn’t played that could swing the general election because people in Trump’s base would be very upset that they didn’t have football, which is practically a religion down there. I disagreed because he would simply shift blame because the pandemic is raging.”

He further said, “They seem to be susceptible to very low-quality information, and easy to propagandize and almost immune to facts. Because, as Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s advisor, said, they have alternative facts. If they stay in their propaganda silos -- like the Fox News propaganda silo -- it wouldn’t matter what happened because they’d say the handling of the pandemic has been great. The handling of the pandemic has been the worst in the industrialized democratic world, by far. By far, in the United States, at a federal level, it’s been a disaster. And as a result, we’re dealing with this pandemic. And yet I didn’t think that would affect voters because the blame would be shifted.”

He added, “If the NFL doesn’t play football -- I think the NFL players have a lot of power here -- if they don’t play football, at a certain point, the core will remain but the [NFL] football base goes all throughout the country. It doesn’t just hit one or another’s political base, but insofar as there’s such a thing as swing voters still, it would absolutely affect some of them.” 

“If the NFL season isn’t played or it’s interrupted, as a result of social justice issues -- and of course we all understand this is against the backdrop of the pandemic … I know we exist in this sports bubble and we have this outsized idea of the effect of sports, but I think that might actually have political consequences in a general election,” he concluded.

On Twitter, Kellerman’s comments found currency. A Twitter user wrote, “Say what y’all want about Max Kellerman but one thing I know for sure when it comes to Black issues, that man gone ride for us.”

Another commented, “Max Kellerman has these MAGA boys big mad lmao. You love to see it.”

‘Max Kellerman said SEC fans are dumb rednecks who easily believe in whatever propaganda they’re fed by the people they blindly support. Tell me where he’s wrong,” wrote another Twitter user. 

Several Twitter users also brought in actor Terry Crews into the conversation, with most implying that they would rather have a Kellerman than a Crews. One wrote, “The Black delegation proposes a trade to the white delegation. Terry Crews for Max Kellerman.”

Another said, “I’d like to trade Terry Crews (again) and 2 jars of Hellman's Mayonnaise for Max Kellerman in the Urban American Draft.”

Crews has, for some time now, faced the ire of the Black community for his criticism of Black Lives Matter protests. Without any apparent reason, on Thursday morning, Crews tweeted out "BOYCOTT MAGIC CITY" and included the hashtag #blacklovematters. He was talking about the Magic City strip club in Atlanta, Georgia.

Crews, in its aftermath, received a lot of blowback, especially with many pointing out that most of the women working at Magic City were Black, asking him why he wanted to boycott them. A Twitter user wrote, “It's weird that you would use the hashtag #blacklovematters while calling for a boycott of Magic City. Most of the women who work at Magic City are Black. Why are you asking us to boycott them?” adding, “I just feel like even when you may not intend to, you always come across as attacking Black women. Black women had your back when no one else did, so I am a little confused and uncomfortable.”

Back in July, Crews faced backlash for saying, “If you are a child of God, you are my brother and sister. I have family of every race, creed and ideology. We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn't morph into #blacklivesbetter.”