Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit tested positive for elevated levels of betamethasone, an anti-inflammatory corticosteroid that is legal to a certain level in horse racing. Subsequent testing will take place to determine whether or not Medina Spirit’s win at Churchill Downs will be thrown out, and already, its trainer, Bob Baffert, has been banned from the track.
Baffert decided to go on the offensive in response to these allegations, appearing on Fox News on Monday morning to discuss what is going on. The following clip is real, and it involves a grown man blaming cancel culture for there being allegations of doping against a horse that had a positive test for elevated levels of a controlled substance.
Baffert: My horse is a victim of cancel culture pic.twitter.com/PgWWtiidAI
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) May 10, 2021
“Well, I haven’t heard anything officially, they haven’t told me anything,” Baffert said when asked about whether or not Medina Spirit will be able to run at the Preakness this weekend. “I know when Churchill Downs came out with that statement, that was pretty harsh. And I think they had to just … you know, with all the noise going out … we live in a different world now. This America’s different. And it was like a cancel culture kind of a thing, so they’re reviewing it, I haven’t been told anything, we’re prepared to run.”
It gets better! Here was Baffert’s explanation for what happened…
https://twitter.com/rickbozich/status/1391773986120417280
…and here is why this is even more absurd than it seems on the surface.
Baffert has argued this before.
In July of 2020, his horse Merneith tested positive for dextorphan after a second place finish at Del Mar.
Baffert appealed the positive test claiming that an employee was taking cough medicine that accidentally contaminated the horse. https://t.co/POapre0zHL
— Dalton Godbey (@Dalton_Godbey) May 10, 2021
So as a recap: A dude who bares a striking resemblance to Ashley Schaffer of Eastbound and Down went onto Fox News, said that this was the second time someone on cough medicine peed on some hay that a horse ate, and as a result, the horse tested positive for some sort of drug. The difference between that time and this time is that Baffert said that a right-wing buzzword is at fault. Anything to prove that the horse is not, as former president Donald Trump put it, a “junky.”
