Interim ‘Jeopardy’ Host Ken Jennings Under Fire for Insensitive Tweets

Just one day after Jeopardy named Ken Jennings interim host, the game show legend has found himself in hot water due to an insensitive tweet from six years ago. Shortly after Jeopardy announced that Jennings would be temporarily taking over for the late Alex Trebek, Twitter users — including actress Yvette Nicole Brown — resurfaced a 2014 tweet in which he wrote, “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.” Neither Jennings nor Jeopardy! has addressed the backlash, although Jennings did apologize for the “ableist” tweet in 2018.

On Monday night, Community star Yvette Nicole Brown shared a story about Jennings’ interim hosting gig, but unlike the thousands of fans celebrating Jeopardy‘s decision, the actress spoke out against it with a simple, “Nope.” When asked to elaborate, Brown pointed Twitter users to an insensitive tweet in which Jennings dismissed wheelchair users as “sad.” Added Brown, “His tweet was bad enough. But the arrogance or callousness to leave it up says more about him than the horrible tweet does.”

This is not the first time that Jennings’ 2014 tweet has resurfaced. Two years ago, Twitter users once again circulated the insensitive tweet, prompting the Jeopardy alum to respond. “I never did a public flogging for this but I did apologize personally to angry/hurt people who reached out personally,” he wrote. “It was a joke so inept that it meant something very different in my head [and] I regret the ableist plain reading of it.”

However, Jennings did not delete the tweet, and as of press time, it still remains on his Twitter page.

As IndieWire reports, Jennings’ 2014 tweet is not his only comment that has sparked backlash in recent years. In 2015, after Star Wars fan Daniel Fleetwood made it a point to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens before he died of cancer, Jennings tweeted, “It can’t be a good sign that every fan who has seen the new Star Wars movie died shortly thereafter.” Three years later, he reportedly wrote that an “awful MAGA grandma” mourning her deceased son was “his favorite person on Twitter.”

Jeopardy has not yet commented on the controversy, but the game show is currently slated to begin filming with Jennings on Monday, November 30, so the show has just a few days to get ahead of it. Even so, it’s not great that Jennings is heading into his interim host tenure with this cloud over his head.

Decider has reached out to Jeopardy and Sony Pictures Television for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.

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