Dave Portnoy, the founder and owner of Barstool Sports, recently revealed that he fired podcaster Kirk Minihane for four minutes on Wednesday. On the latest episode of The Unnamed Show, Portnoy divulged that there was a video of someone asking how Brianna LaPaglia (“Brianna Chickenfry”) went from hating Taylor Swift to now being the biggest fan of her music. In response, Minihane called LaPaglia a fraud, adding that she is one of the biggest frauds on the planet. The video was cut and made its way across social media, which apparently resulted in LaPaglia reaching out to Portnoy.
LaPaglia asked what was going on with Minihane, communicating that she had never spoken to him in his life. Furthermore, she asked to come on the show to give her perspective, something that Portnoy advised her not to do. From there, Portnoy texted Minihane with several expletives, prompting him to call his boss while in the car with his daughter driving back from a college visit. Portnoy acknowledged on the show that it was the angriest he has been in a long time, and he prompted to curse Minihane out on the phone. As this was taking place, Minihane expressed that he had no idea what the issue was.
“You then hang up the phone on me, and I text you back and I say, ‘I’m going to say whatever I want,’” Minihane recollected, “which by the way, I’m going to say whatever I want, and you said, ‘You’re fired.’ And for about 10 minutes, I was driving in upstate New York thinking, ‘Well okay. We’ll see what I can do next.’”
Minihane, who joined Barstool Sports in 2020 after working at WEEI, wondered why he had been fired and thought about other things he was doing with his life. Minihane called Portnoy back and was much calmer. He then expressed to Minihane that he did not even know LaPaglia, reacting to the clip of him saying that she was a fraud.
“If you had gone public, had a press conference and said, ‘I’m firing Kirk Minihane because he called Brianna Chickenfry a fraud,’ you would have got f****ng barbecued and her life would have been way worse if that happened.”
Portnoy acknowledged that Minihane’s fanbase would have probably come after him if he decided to take this course of action. Ryan Whitney then asked why Portnoy was sensitive towards LaPaglia compared to other employees who have worked at the digital media brand. Before Portnoy explained what was taking place, Minihane articulated that he was doing nothing wrong.
“You guys aren’t in a world, and neither of you have dealt with it, where you’re getting the most hate. She gets the most hate you can get on the internet right now. I’m not saying rightly or wrongly.”
Minihane added that she has her own life and is more successful but personally does not care. In fact, his attitude upon discovering what transpired was adversarial to LaPaglia, and Minihane invited her to come on the show. Minihane does not like her and is not sure if he can say that because he may be fired.
“This is somebody who’s in a different world, and I’m telling you. I haven’t seen anybody get this type of hate in 20 years of me doing this. Bri just turned down $12 million, and she’s trying to build her career up, and then within a week and a half, she’s the most hated person, and somebody who was at the same company you’ve never met from the clouds is being like, ‘She’s the biggest fraud.’”
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