— Opinion —

Media Paints Millionaire Athlete As Another ‘Oppressed’ Victim Of Police

By  Matt Walsh
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   DailyWire.com
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Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill looks on before the start of an NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024, in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Al Diaz/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

It was just a few months ago that police in Chicago attempted to pull over a man named Dexter Reed for driving with illegally tinted windows. I talked about this incident on the show at the time, when the media was trying to turn Reed into the next George Floyd. As soon as the traffic stop began, Reed began acting suspiciously. He repeatedly refused officers’ commands to lower his window so they could see what was going on inside his car. Then he raised the tinted window to completely obstruct the officers’ view of the inside of the vehicle. And then, within seconds, Dexter Reed opened fire.

Police officers train on footage like this all the time. There are hundreds of videos like it all over the internet. And they all tell the same story, which is this: When the police pull someone over, and that person attempts to hide what he’s doing, then the situation has just become extremely dangerous. All traffic stops involve some level of risk. But when someone rolls up a tinted window instead of complying, that risk gets exponentially higher. That’s especially true when the suspect has a criminal history. So police have no choice but to respond quickly and decisively, and potentially with force, because they’re in a life-threatening situation. Otherwise, they might get shot and killed before they can even see what’s coming.

As I said at the time, there was an attempt to portray Dexter Reed as some kind of BLM martyr. But it fell apart the moment this footage was released. Everyone understood why the officers drew their weapons. Everyone understood that Reed had put the officers in fear for their lives, even before he started shooting. The entire media-driven narrative — that Dexter Reed was an oppressed victim of police brutality — fell apart. And no one spoke of it again.

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But there’s always someone waiting in the wings to claim that mantle of oppression, especially in an election year. And this week, Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill is going for it — even though his traffic stop, in many ways, has a lot of similarities to Dexter Reed’s. Tyreek Hill, like Dexter Reed, was pulled over for a lawful reason. In Tyreek Hill’s case, he was speeding near the Hard Rock Stadium, where the Dolphins play. That’s all caught on camera. And like Dexter Reed, Tyreek Hill also had an existing criminal record at the time of his stop, although the officers probably weren’t aware of that. In Hill’s case, that record included a prior guilty plea for serious offenses — including domestic assault and battery by strangulation.

And then, when he was pulled over, Tyreek Hill, like Dexter Reed, refused lawful orders to lower his tinted window. Instead, he started raising the window in clear defiance of the officers. Watch:

Instead of complying, Tyreek Hill rolled up a tinted window while the police were trying to talk to him. They responded aggressively to his belligerence. Then, Tyreek Hill refused to sit on the curb as instructed, saying he had just had surgery, so he can’t sit down. He can play in a professional football game a few hours later and score a touchdown, but he can’t possibly sit down. That’s just asking too much. So the officer again used some force, this time to put him on the curb. The officers also detained one of Hill’s teammates, Calais Campbell, after he approached the scene in the middle of the road. Ultimately the authorities cited Hill for reckless driving but didn’t arrest him. They also didn’t charge him for obstructing an officer, which is a misdemeanor in Florida punishable by up to a year in prison.

Speaking to reporters, Hill claimed he had “no idea” why he was placed in handcuffs. “No idea. It’s crazy. No idea. I wasn’t disrespectful because my mom didn’t raise me that way. Didn’t cuss. Did none of that. I’m still trying to figure it out… Don’t be disrespectful.”

Of course, the truth is that Hill could have avoided all of this by acting like an adult rather than a spoiled toddler. He knows that. Everyone watching the video knows that. But the media and the Left are pretending otherwise. They’re completely ignoring the evidence and running with the same narrative we’ve seen a million times before, even if the facts don’t remotely fit. Over on ESPN for example, they’re acting as if Tyreek Hill was just killed. They’re mourning him as if he died, by comparing him to a bunch of other BLM martyrs. Watch:

Just to be clear about this: Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, and Philando Castile are all dead. That’s not to relitigate all of those cases — all of which the media lied about to one degree or another. It’s just a fact. This guy is comparing several dead people to Tyreek Hill, who in fact is not dead. Tyreek Hill is very much alive. He’s still earning $30 million a year. He’s still a famous celebrity. What happened to Hill is that on Sunday, he endured a minor inconvenience that was entirely attributable to his own actions. This was such a minor inconvenience that he was able to play in a football game afterwards and mock the whole situation with a celebration after he scored a touchdown.

All of this fake hysteria is intended to obscure an obvious point, which is that Hill — like so many other BLM heroes — didn’t comply with lawful orders that were given by police officers. He put them in a dangerous situation as a result. And he suffered the predictable consequences of that decision. When the outraged ESPN personality says he’s “frustrated” that the country hasn’t “reckoned with race,” what he’s really saying is that black people should be able to do whatever they want when the police pull them over. They should be able to put the police in danger, apparently. Or maybe that’s only the case if they’re driving expensive cars, like Tyreek Hill was. Maybe the law just doesn’t apply to football players.

That’s the position of Tyreek Hill’s team, the Miami Dolphins. In a statement, the team said they “urge” the police department “to take swift and strong action against the officers who engaged in such despicable behavior.” The team didn’t even mention Tyreek Hill’s decision to put people in danger by driving recklessly on the way to the stadium. They didn’t mention that he disobeyed the officers’ commands. They pretend as if the officers had no reason whatsoever to treat Hill like a potential threat to their lives. This is the lose-lose situation that cops are in. They’re being told that they have to ignore suspects who roll up their tinted windows, and just hope that it doesn’t turn out to be another Dexter Reed situation. If they do anything to protect themselves, those cops are “despicable.”

Meanwhile, the brain trust of former athletes over on FS1 took the melodrama up ten more notches. Here’s former NFL star LeSean McCoy in a conversation with former NFL player Emmanuel Acho. These are some of the most oppressed people in America. They were paid millions to play a game. Now they’re paid millions to talk about playing a game. But that doesn’t make them any less oppressed. Watch:


Oh is that what you tell your kids? You tell them if the cops are there, get to some light? Have you considered telling them to comply with lawful commands? Have you thought about that? Why don’t you tell your kids to simply comply with lawful orders given by officers of the law? If they do that, then everything will be fine.

We’re told that black men are afraid of the cops. They’re terrified that they’re going to be executed on the spot. Tyreek Hill was afraid, allegedly. Well if that’s the case, why are you going out of your way to antagonize them? Why are you doing everything in your power to make your interactions with the police as stressful and contentious as possible? When I see videos like the one with Tyreek Hill — or any of the footage of any BLM martyr — I do not see black men who are afraid of the cops. I see black men who completely disregard the cops and act as though they are above the law and impervious to the basic rules and standards of conduct that govern the rest of us. If you’re afraid for your life while dealing with the cops, why would you roll up a tinted window? How is that going to make you safer? How is that going to make the situation LESS volatile? You are making it more volatile. You are directly, actively, making it into a more volatile situation.

But this does not occur to these kind of commentators. We can’t blame them for that. They’re emotional. In fact, these guys were so emotional that when they came back from commercial break, they were still comforting each other:


What brave warriors. What heroes. My God. They had to overcome the trauma of talking about a football player’s briefly unpleasant interaction with the police. They somehow had to soldier through and find a way to keep talking about football. It’s painful, you see. It’s painful to think about the minor inconvenience that a millionaire football player experienced. A minor inconvenience of his own making. They are shaken up. They are barely able to hold it together.

For his part, the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, Mike McDaniel, was even more hysterical than the sports commentators. He appeared to be choking back tears as he said he couldn’t imagine what it’s like to be as oppressed as Tyreek Hill is. Watch:

Fifty years ago a guy this weepy and emasculated would never be the head coach of a football team. It just wouldn’t have been possible for a theater kid to get a job like this. But here we are. Mike McDaniel is “triggered.” It really messes him up, to not know “what it feels like” to be Tyreek Hill. He’ll never be able to experience that level of oppression.

But the coach could find out pretty easily. He could start driving his sports car, as recklessly as possible, around slow-moving traffic. And when he gets pulled over, he can roll up his tinted windows and dare the cops to do something about it. Very quickly, Mike McDaniel will experience something similar to what Tyreek Hill experienced on Sunday. And if that happens, Mike McDaniel would deserve to be forcibly removed from his car and treated like a threat, just like Tyreek Hill was.

Predictably, no one in the corporate press wants to point this out. Instead, they’re affirming Tyreek Hill’s story of racial grievance at every opportunity. Here’s CNN for example. Watch as they allow Tyreek Hill to claim — without any pushback — that, if he weren’t a football player, the police officers would have executed him on the side of the road. Watch:

Try to follow the logic here. According to Hill, the police knew he was a famous NFL player, with a very high profile. So they knew they had to be on their best behavior. That’s why they decided not to just shoot him outside the stadium. That’s what the police supposedly do to every other black person, but they don’t do it to NFL players. At the same time, according to Tyreek Hill, these same police officers didn’t have any problem risking their entire career just to rough him up on camera for no reason. So they’re cautious police officers, but they’re also extremely reckless at the same time.

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That’s the explanation that flies on CNN, apparently. But it doesn’t make any sense. What makes more sense is that the police did exactly what they were trained to do, which is to treat everyone who behaves like Hill did — regardless of how much money they have — as a potential threat. That’s especially true when, like Dexter Reed, they have a criminal record and start rolling up their tinted window instead of complying.

The only way to explain the reaction from the corporate press, and the Miami Dolphins, is that these people really believe that a black man should be able to do or say literally anything he wants when confronted by police. Whatever happens will always be the cop’s fault, no matter what. The point is to absolve “people of color” of any blame.

But the effect is that they’re infantilized. They’re treated like children incapable of controlling themselves. They’re given no incentive to improve their own behavior. Instead, they’re given more incentive to act like Tyreek Hill — with all the entitlement and hysteria that entails. We saw where that approach leads in 2020. It leads to police pulling out of black neighborhoods, and fewer people choosing to become police officers. And that, in turn, leads to a lot more black people dying. Narcissists like Tyreek Hill claim they’re afraid of that outcome. In reality, they’re doing everything they can to ensure it keeps happening.

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