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John Keim, ESPN Staff WriterSep 5, 2024, 10:47 AM ET
- John Keim covers the Washington Commanders for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2013 after a stint with the Washington Post. He started covering the team in 1994 for the Journal Newspapers and later for the Washington Examiner. He has authored/co-authored four books. You can also listen to him on ‘The John Keim Report’, which airs on ESPN Richmond radio, and follow him on Twitter @john_keim
ASHBURN, Va. — The Commanders have fired an employee one day after a video surfaced in which he made comments about the team’s players being anti-gay, accused Cowboys owner Jerry Jones of being racist and called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a “$50 million puppet.”
Rael Enteen, Washington’s vice president of content the previous four years, also criticized fans and called them “mouth breathers.”
The team on Thursday confirmed the firing via a spokesperson but had no other comment on the matter.
Washington had suspended Enteen on Wednesday, shortly after the video from the O’Keefe Media Group was played on social media platforms. According to the video, Enteen had met the woman on the dating app Hinge, but she turned out to be undercover for the media group. They met twice in June at restaurants in D.C.
In a statement Wednesday, the team said it would investigate the situation. Less than 24 hours later, it fired Enteen.
“The language used in the video runs counter to our values at the Commanders organization,” a Commanders spokesperson said in the initial statement.
Enteen told the undercover reporter that “over 50% of our roster is white religious, and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that comes from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
He also said, “I don’t think the commissioner of the NFL hates gay people, hates black people. Jerry Jones, who really runs the NFL, I think he hates gay people, black people.”
Enteen, who was with the Jets for two years before coming to Washington, called the league’s social justice initiatives “performative.”
“It’s not done out of the goodness of their heart,” he said. “It’s done because George Floyd changed the game. … It’s to make as much money as possible. The NFL cares about the bottom line, like any corporation, above all else.”
Enteen said that because the league makes so much money, it “can faux-prioritize DEI for the sake of good publicity.”
He also said on the video that “most of the fans are high-school-educated alcoholics” and called them “mouth breathers.”
On the video, Enteen also said some players are “dumb as hell” and said some who were smart don’t stay that way after getting hit in the head too many times. He also said those who “get their heads knocked around a few times” are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Enteen also told the reporter, whose name was not revealed and who can be heard on the video but not seen, that his job was to sell hope. Three years ago, there were videos of pipes leaking at then-FedEx Stadium. Fans said it smelled like sewage, but Enteen said he tweeted out that it was just water.
“That,” he said, “is state-run media.”
