Sports broadcaster who smeared Charlie Kirk and was fired by ESPN says network didn't allow him to be 'too black'

Ryan Clark—the ESPN analyst who smeared Charlie Kirk after the Turning Point USA founder was assassinated—has now claimed that he couldn't be "too black" while at ESPN before the network recently fired him.

Clark was on "The Pivot Podcast" and speaking to the host when he said, "I knew, for lack of a better word, I couldn't be too black. What makes me sad is even in trying to adjust to be at least more of what certain people wanted, they still fired me."

Clark claimed that even though the company said that the firing was generally part of a wider layoff, he was specifically targeted to be fired. "Let me put this to bed — I wasn't laid off, I was fired," Clark claimed on the show.

He said that the network timed the firing to disguise what he claimed to be a premeditated action. "They're using layoffs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing," he said. "But there was no cause for it. So because there was no cause for it, you couldn't just fire me, you had to wait 'til the layoffs so you could camouflage it and veil it."

He alleged that an unnamed ESPN executive held animus towards him, which he claimed was relayed to him when he had lunch with Stephen A. Smith at one point in Los Angeles. Clark, who was an NFL safety before joining the network as an analyst, previously smeared Charlie Kirk the month after he was assassinated at Utah Valley University on September 10. Tyler Robinson has admitted to killing Kirk on multiple occasions.

In late October last year, Clark was on a segment where he was being critical of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry after the governor announced they would erect a statue of Kirk on the Louisiana State University campus, where the TPUSA founder was set to speak in October.

"First off, it’s the second most ridiculous thing he said this week. The first was standing on campus and saying he wanted to put a statue of somebody that doesn’t represent the people of Louisiana, doesn’t represent the players and the students at LSU, doesn’t represent the executives that work there," he said, referring to Kirk at the time. "That was the first dumb thing he said this week. This is the second dumb thing, amongst a lot of dumb things that he said."