Aaron Rodgers, a famous, multimillionaire, championship-winning NFL player, wants you to know he’s always a victim.
And if he has to massage the truth to make that happen, all’s fair, apparently.
Rodgers has been on something of a vengeance tour lately, claiming victory over ESPN and critics of his COVID-19 vaccine beliefs and other conspiracies. While one might imagine the 42-year-old quarterback would want to focus on what is expected to be his final season in the NFL, he’s instead spent his offseason appearing on podcasts to denounce people like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dianna Russini.
In a two-part interview for teammate Cam Heyward’s Not Just Football with Cam Heyward podcast, the Pittsburgh Steelers signal-caller doubled down on his animosity against the Worldwide Leader.
“ESPN is really scared,” Rodgers asserted. “Because I can speak up and speak my mind. And that McAfee thing rattled their feathers because I didn’t just say that on McAfee’s show—honestly, I love Pat, and he’s done more for that network than any other horrible show they have on there—they should pay those guys doing it.”
Rodgers also took time to call out specific ESPN personalities he felt had once been friends with him before he became more vocal about conspiracy theories.
“I feel like there’s a ton of hypocrisy out there,” said Rodgers. “You know, everybody loved, you know, loved hearing about my takes on Colin Kaepernick when I said he was one of the top 64 quarterbacks in the league. They enjoyed my takes.
“Mina Kimes, you know, had me to her house for a feature that I did. All these people were my friends in the media until I came out against COVID and said, ‘I’m not going to stand for this f*cking f*ckery.’ And now after everything has come out, all they can say is, ‘Oh, well, you lied about it.’ You know, that’s like when somebody has an argument and all they can ever say is they can they attack your character instead of the content of what you’re actually saying. You know that you’re actually on the right side of things.
“I’ve said many times when I said I was immunized, it was because that statement alone was the crux of my entire argument and ongoing appeal with the NFL around my vaccination status. Not to mention the hypocrisy around the treatment of players who were nonvaxed. The inhumane way that we were treated as second-hand citizens around the facility.”
Rodgers appears to be referring to a 2017 profile piece that Kimes wrote for ESPN The Magazine. While the quarterback seems to present it as if Kimes invited him over to her house, the profile tells a different story.
It’s an oppressively warm afternoon in Los Angeles, and I’m sitting in my living room, looking at Rodgers looking at my stuff. The night before, his agent had sent me his phone number, suggesting that we meet at either his place or mine. A couple of hours later, Rodgers texted me and told me he’d come here. So now he’s sitting a few feet away from me on my sofa in a black T-shirt and jeans, Stan Smiths tapping on the floor, his arm — maybe the most valuable arm in the world — resting on a throw pillow.
Typically, writers meet their subjects at a neutral location — somewhere a publicist has chosen to reveal something about the celebrity, like his taste in food or hobbies or charitable work. Exposition by way of description. But Rodgers wanted to meet here. When he sits down, he scans the room, his eyes flickering as he processes my books, my records, the dog toy I forgot to pick up before he arrived. He asks me whether I’ve read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (I haven’t) and whether the fuzzy white figurine on my mantel is an alpaca (it’s a llama) and whether the berries sitting in a bowl on my coffee table are fresh (I have no idea, but I say yes). As he studies his surroundings, it occurs to me that when I write about this, I’ll have to describe my things instead of his things, and I realize that’s probably why we’re here.
I set my phone on the table and press the record button. He pulls out his and does the same. So he won’t be taken “out of context,” he explains.
While Rodgers made it sound like Kimes had him over for Triscuits, the reality is that Rodgers appears to be the one who wanted to meet there in what could be read as a power play.
It suggests Rodgers’ perception of the world may be working against him. Media members were never his friends, but perhaps he didn’t understand that, seeing those kinds of relationships through that prism out of a desire to think everyone liked him (I’m just spitballing).
Or maybe he’s just full of sh*t, because it certainly sounds like he knew his interview with Kimes was transactional and he felt the need to protect himself.
For her part, Kimes responded to Rodgers’ angst during an appearance on The Sports Gossip Show, saying that he seems to be holding onto criticism in an unhealthy way.
“It was interesting to see him rehash — I mean, he’s been doing this for a while — the COVID stuff,” Kimes said on “The Sports Gossip Show” on Tuesday, September 8. “He clearly was very bothered by the criticism. I was someone who was critical of him. But I wasn’t critical — and I think a lot of people — that he wasn’t vaccinated, the criticism was that he lied about it by omission or whatever.”
Kimes also noted that, for a guy who claims he doesn’t want media attention, he sure does go out of his way to attract a lot of it.
“I watch interviews with him and press conferences or whatever, and he’s the one who brings it up a lot,” Kimes added. “On the one hand, you’re very private about this, which is totally your right. But on the other hand, you bring it up a lot, dude! Like out of nowhere. I don’t really know how to parse that. I’m happy for him that he’s happy, but I guess the confusing part for me is what actual level of privacy he is seeking in all of this.”