Jemele Hill Interview Cut to Commercial in Atlanta When the Topic Turned to Donald Trump

In what could could be a stupendously ill-timed broadcasting glitch in the best-case scenario (and straight-up censorship in the worst), Jemele Hill’s comments about Donald Trump were mysteriously deleted from the Fox 5 Atlanta’s broadcast of The Wendy Williams Show on Tuesday.

The sports journalist, who was suspended from ESPN and ultimately bought out of her contract after making comments about Donald Trump’s adjacency to white supremacy on Twitter in 2017, began walking Williams through the story.

“Honestly, I thought I was saying, basically that this couch was purple, right?” said Hill, who previously compared calling Trump a white supremacist to “saying water is wet.”

“I thought it was something that was obvious, especially after Charlottesville, I was very disappointed, like a lot of people that the president…” she said, and was immediately interrupted by a commercial for MasterChef Junior.

After about a minute and 20 seconds, the show, which airs live, cut back in (interrupting the commercial for Papa John’s that had been airing). At that point, Hill had moved on from Trump and was discussing her time at ESPN and why she was unhappy with her job at the time of her departure. (She made just one more passing, vague reference to the president during the interview.)

The interview aired uninterrupted in New York:

During the portion of the discussion that had been excised from the Fox 5 Atlanta broadcast, Hill recounted calling Trump a white supremacist on Twitter to a round of audience applause.

“The track record is laid out,” she said. “So we know what he said about the Central Park 5, and the housing discrimination…”

Jezebel has reached out to Fox 5 Atlanta as well as The Wendy Williams Show for comment and will update this post if and when we hear back.

Update, 12:50 pm ET: A Fox 5 spokesperson has given Jezebel a statement attributing the commercial interruption to technical difficulties:

“This morning, during a live broadcast of The Wendy Williams Show, FOX 5 experienced technical difficulties which triggered an interruption of the program. The issue has been addressed and resolved. The program will be rebroadcast tomorrow morning from 3am-4am.”