One former ESPN star said she’s received “disturbing” messages after posting about the death of Charlie Kirk.
Sam Ponder, who worked at the Worldwide Leader for over a decade, revealed last week that she received a flood of direct messages after mourning the 31-year-old conservative activist, who was assassinated at a campus event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
“I mourn for Charlie’s family. I mourn for our country,” Ponder wrote in part of her original post on X. “But I have renewed hope that many, like me, will find the courage to lovingly speak the truth boldly in the public square, as he often did.”
On Saturday, two days after writing about Kirk, the former “Sunday NFL Countdown” host said she had received the DMs, describing them as worse than usual.
“My DMs are more disturbing than ever (and trust me, that’s sayin something). Apparently only perfect people can be mourned when they’re murdered in their 30s with a wife and young children,” she wrote. “When a man is shot, debating opinions with anyone for all to see, he must align with our chosen dogma perfectly. If not, he had it coming/shouldn’t have said those mean things, so you should shut up about it. How can we see someone post about sadness over the death of ANYONE they cared about, even someone we think was flawed, and say ‘Stop being sad about them. I didn’t like their opinions.’ Mourn with those who mourn. If I ever see hypocrisy, let me see it in myself.
“God forbid every word we’ve ever spoken be the prerequisite for sympathy when we die.”
Ponder, who was let go by ESPN in 2024 after13 years with the network, was not the only one in the sports world to mourn Kirk’s death. Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart was among the athletes who condemned the shooting, and the Yankees held a moment of silence in the hours after the fatal incident.
Seven home NFL teams on Sunday paid tribute to Kirk after the Packers did so on Thursday night.
A Carolina Panthers staffer was fired, and a member of Joe Burrow’s charity board was removed from their position for their respective controversial posts about Kirk in the days after his death.
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