Longtime SEC Network host and Alabama sports voice Paul Finebaum is weighing a run for Alabama’s open U.S. Senate in 2026 — and in doing so has revealed that ESPN once blocked him from interviewing President Donald Trump ahead of the 2019 Alabama-LSU game in Tuscaloosa.

Finebaum told OutKick’s Clay Travis that he lined up the interview through contacts in Washington and was prepared to travel to the White House days before Trump attended the top-five showdown in Bryant-Denny Stadium.

But, Finebaum also revealed ESPN executives “killed it.”

“I was devastated,” he recalls, “it wasn’t about politics. It was about the President of the United States coming to the biggest college football game of the year. But they told me we are not allowed to mix politics with sports.”

“Our producer said, ‘We’ve got to do something big,’” Finebaum recalled. “So I reached out to a friend in D.C. He said, ‘You want to get Trump?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ It was looking good, they were ready to line it up at the White House. But when I told my bosses, they killed it.”

ESPN leadership has long said the network should “stick to sports.”

When he took over, ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro publicly emphasized that ESPN is “not a political organization,” in what appeared to be a pullback from overt political content.

But that standard has not been applied evenly. Democrats, especially Barack Obama, have been featured prominently on ESPN platforms.

For eight years, ESPN made a high-profile event out of the president’s NCAA Tournament picks, “Barack-etology”, complete with SportsCenter rollouts and ESPN press releases. Those annual segments produced as White House exclusives turned into a recurring showcase.

The revelation comes as Finebaum acknowledges he is seriously considering a campaign for Alabama’s open Senate seat in 2026.

On Tuesday, he confirmed that Republican leaders in the state have reached out about his potential candidacy, and he admitted he is “thinking about it constantly.”