Tennys Sandgren, the 97th-ranked men's tennis player in the world, just pulled off the greatest victory of his life in the Australian Open. He took out No. 5 seed Dominic Thiem in five sets Monday. The huge upset moved Sandgren into the quarterfinals with some of the great names of tennis, including Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. That alone should have been the big story, but instead liberal media checked out his social media, branded him "alt-right" and ganged up on him.
During the press conference after upsetting Theim, an unidentified Aussie reporter ambushed Sandgren about his alleged social media ties to the alt-right:
“Tennys, the rise in your profile has drawn attention to your social media output, which includes some political figures who might be considered outside the mainstream. Yeah, there was a #Pizzagate exchange at some point, and I just wondered if you were concerned about having yourself connected to some of these controversial figures.”
Sandgren found the question amusing and laughed. The reporter continued the questioning, asking him about various conspiracy theories and people identified as alt-right. Sandgren denied he's alt-right and responded:
"I mean, no. I'm not concerned about it. It's fine, it's fine. Look, who you follow on Twitter I feel like doesn't matter even a little bit. What information you see doesn't dictate what you think or believe. I think it's crazy to think that. I think it's crazy to assume that, to say, 'Oh well he's following X person so he believes all the things that this person believes.' I think that's ridiculous."
Sandgren added that he's "a firm Christian" whose allegiance is for "Christ and following Him and that's what I support."
Once the unidentified reporter pressed Sandgren, the me-too-I-saw-the-alt-right-connection crowd started chirping away. Eli Rosenberg wrote today in The Washington Post: "As Sandgren advanced through the Australian Open’s early rounds, a steady pace of people began commenting about Sandgren’s history on Twitter: his tweets, who he’d followed, which tweets he’d liked and retweeted."
Simon Briggs of the Telegraph wrote: "Sandgren’s social-media feed shows numerous links to right-wing ideologues. On Jan 15, he retweeted a video posted by Nicholas Fuentes, who attended the notorious white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last August." Briggs went deeper with it:
"In 2016, Sandgren responded to a Twitter message about Pizzagate – the conspiracy theory that connected Hilary Clinton to human trafficking and child abuse – with the words 'It's sickening and the collective evidence is too much to ignore.'”
Rosenberg pressed the attack against Sandgren, pointing out he was home-schooled in Tennessee, and he made a point of saying Sandgren criticized Colin Kaepernick:
"It had begun engaging with more politically charged content, the volume of which seemed to increase during the 2016 presidential election. For Sandgren, that meant retweets of outlets such as Drudge Report and Infowars, and others about Sharia law and radical Islamic terrorism. He debated the former tennis player James Blake about racism and criticized former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his anthem protest."
Rosenberg reported Sandgren had engaged with people spreading misinformation portraying Hillary Clinton as a Satan-worshiping occultist, and "Pizzagate, a similarly baseless conspiracy theory hoax that Clinton was connected to a pizzeria child sex ring."
Despite Sandgren's denials of the alt-right charges, Rosenberg knew better, writing "the damage had been done." It's okay for media to wander from sports to politics, but conservative athletes should not cross that line.
Contributing to the lib media feeding frenzy, Deadspin's Laura Wagner is now labeling Sandgren a "Pizzagate Truther" and castigating him for believing in "fake news." "Meet the Trump-loving, beer-chugging American making Australian Open magic," read the headline for a story by The New York Post's Kyle Schnitzer.
Briggs and Schnitzer both devoted space to the magnitude of Sandgren's upset. “I definitely had a real pinch-me moment. Wow, this is hopefully real. If I wake up now, I'm going -- to be real upset,” Sandgren said.
In the wake of the media storm over his Twitter account, Sandgren deleted much of his social media. Maybe now these so-called sports media can set their liberal agenda aside long enough to follow the amazing sports story happening right in front of them.
