You gotta hand it to Barstool. No other brand does a better job of making itself the story and milking days of content out of a single incident.
Barstool founder Dave Portnoy was invited to the White House on Thursday to interview President Donald Trump. Portnoy accepted and said that it isn’t something he should have to apologize for.
On Friday, Big Cat (real name Dan Katz) took Portnoy, Barstool CEO Erika Nardini, and parent company Penn National to task for not giving the rest of the Barstool staff any notice. Big Cat said on his SiriusXM show The Yak that he had to learn about the presidential interview on Twitter.
Katz admits that if he were consulted, he probably would have pushed back against the idea of interviewing Trump. He said that it goes against one of Barstool’s core principles, which is to avoid politics and focus on humor. Still, he admits that the opportunity to interview a sitting president, no matter who it is, isn’t something he would expect the company to instantly dismiss.
He accused Portnoy of letting Trump turn the interview into “a political ad” and letting Barstool “be used in a political way” by not asking hard questions or offering any follow ups. His real complaint was that though was that he was not told about the interview before it happened.
“It’s been a tough 12 hours or whatever it’s been trying to understand where I fit in now. There’s only two explanations,” Big Cat said. “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, and that’s the part I’m struggling with.”
Big Cat says Portnoy’s interview with Trump marks a turning point for Barstool. He repeated the phrase “we can’t pretend now that we don’t do politics” multiple times. He points out that he and PFT Commenter were offered the chance to interview Joe Biden on Pardon My Take earlier this year, but declined because he thought Barstool viewed itself as an escape from those subjects.
“Politics are serious, man. You can’t do a political interview and not be serious,” Big Cat said, alluding to Portnoy. “It’s a serious f***ing game, and that’s why I don’t talk about it. I don’t have the intelligence. I don’t have the ability to navigate these waters. So once you get in them, you can’t pretend you’re not in them”
Portnoy will almost certainly answer some of Katz’s critiques at some point. Whether they do it face to face or this sniping between shows continues remains to be seen.
