Did Jemele Hill deserve to get punished further by ESPN?

It was a straightforward question posed by CNN’s Michael Smerconish to Curt Schilling on Saturday, but it turned into Schilling attacking CNN and defending himself for the anti-transgender post that led to him getting fired.

Schilling started by sort of defending Hill by saying she “absolutely” should not be fired for her comments last week, when she called President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter, but then quickly went on to attack the “SC6” anchor.

ESPN admonished Hill for the comments, but did not punish her.

“She shouldn’t be fired. I would fire her. I would have never hired her,” said Schilling, who was driving back from helping hurricane victims in Texas and Florida.

“She has no place in any platform that represents sports. She is openly racist, I believe she has been openly racist. I don’t have to tell you guys that you guys have been at the forefront of this conversation at CNN since Trump’s been elected.”

Smerconish correctly took that as a shot at his news network, which has been under attack by Trump for its perceived bias against him.

“CNN has been at the vanguard of everything from the fake Russian dossier to calling Trump a white supremacist time after time, anchor after anchor with no validation,” Schilling said.

The two then began verbally sparring over the reasons Schilling was let go by ESPN. Smerconish accused Schilling of unfairly representing the transgender community with his Facebook post that decried North Carolina’s bathroom law.

“You were pompous in Philly and you are pompous now,” Smerconish said. “You come on my program and make a number of wild assertions, none with specificity towards me or my program.”

Schilling argued throughout the interview that he was not fired for speaking, but “for being a conservative.”

“The problem for me is that ESPN, Disney openly supports what I believe to be racist, liberal agenda and platforms, while denying they do,” he said. “To me, that’s frustrating.”

Schilling did agree, though, with ESPN’s right to fire him.

“They should have canned me, that’s what they believe,” Schilling said. “My First Amendment reasons weren’t abridged. I got fired for saying things that my bosses disagreed with. I am all right with that. I got fired for reasons of my own doing.”