Craig Carton unleashes on Dan Le Batard: ‘A woke scumbag … with no talent’
· Yahoo Sports
A WFAN caller learned an important lesson last week: Don’t bring up Dan Le Batard to Craig Carton.
During a Friday edition of The Carton Show as the city continued to revel in a New York Knicks championship, “Joe from Rockland County” phoned in to get Carton’s take on comments by Le Batard about Knicks owner James Dolan, with whom Carton is seemingly somewhat close and has interviewed on-air multiple times this year.
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Before the caller could even detail Le Batard’s commentary about the polarizing Knicks owner, Carton unleashed on the Miami-based host, who has frequently criticized Carton over his imprisonment for fraud and gambling addiction over the years. Carton called out the contrast between Le Batard’s regular jabs at him while founding a company alongside John Skipper, the former ESPN president who is also a recovering addict, while also declaring Le Batard a “woke scumbag … with no talent.”
“I don’t care for him because he’s an untalented hack,” Carton said. “He’s a self-appointed moral compass of America, when he’s had zero success on any platform he’s ever been on. And if not for gambling money with his company down in Florida, he would be a no-name, nobody.”
Carton claimed Le Batard does not live up to his reputation as a journalist, and does not have the bona fides to throw stones at other media figures, the way he increasingly has since leaving ESPN — including multiple times toward Carton’s former WFAN cohost Boomer Esiason in recent months.
“When he had an opportunity to actually do some hard-hitting news interviews, he’s passed on the opportunity every single time,” Carton said.
“So nobody cares what he has to say, period stop. Nobody ever has cared what he’s had to say. He’s never had a No. 1-rated radio show, he’s never had a No. 1-rated television show, he’s never been the No. 1-rated columnist when he was a columnist in South Florida. He just likes to tell other people how they should live their lives. And when he’s not talking abut successful people in media, he has nothing to say worth listening to.”
While Le Batard at times has tiptoed around Carton’s battle with addiction while criticizing him, he has made Carton a go-to punching bag since the host returned to the industry roughly around the time that Le Batard left the Worldwide Leader. Once, Le Batard said Carton getting his own national show at FS1 was an “indictment” of the sports media industry.
Seemingly letting out years of frustration on Friday, Carton brought up Le Batard “routinely” disparaging him, calling Le Batard a “loser” who is afraid to have an “adult argument or conversation” with his opponents. Carton also accused Le Batard of selectively beating up on colleagues with whom he has political differences.
“If you only surround yourself with people that blow smoke up your a** and agree with you, you’re going to think that your opinion is the most important in the world and that you are right about everything,” he said. “It takes a man to actually bring in opposing points of view to have a conversation with you, to recognize that the world doesn’t revolve around your opinions.”
Later, Carton got more specific about Le Batard’ supposed ethical breaches, getting pretty specific for someone who early in his rant claimed he had no idea Le Batard even hosted a show anymore. Carton called out former First Man Doug Emhoff’s appearance on Le Batard’s show and knocked Le Batard for not asking Emhoff about domestic violence allegations that surfaced during the 2024 election. And he mocked Le Batard for saying he is “uncomfortable” discussing the alleged impropriety of Dianna Russini, a recurring contributor to his show, or his own falling-out with cohost Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, while decrying mistakes others make in the industry.
The most direct and personal hits came toward the end of Carton’s rant, when he said he hoped Le Batard was unable to have children.
“I feel bad if he has children. I would hate if he was my father, I’d be embarrassed,” Carton said. “Hopefully he can’t have kids, populate the world with more of his bad takes on everything. He should just be happy DraftKings wrote him a check and shut up. I’m a bad guy because I’m a gambling addict? You hired a drug addict to run your company, right?”
Clearly, Carton has wanted to get this off his chest for a while. The caller never had a chance to bring up the original Dolan topic he wanted Carton’s reaction to before Carton spent about five minutes laying into Le Batard.
Given the history between the two, this is unlikely to be the last we hear from the two longtime East Coast radio hosts with quite different views of their roles in the industry.
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