Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason sounded off on the U.S. government’s decision to exchange WNBA star Brittney Griner for international arms dealer Viktor Bout in a prisoner swap on Thursday, saying that the country looked “pathetic” for making the deal.
Speaking on WFAN’s Boomer & Gio show Thursday morning, Esiason made clear that he was happy for Griner to be headed home, but that he didn’t like leaving fellow wrongfully detained American Paul Whelan behind in Russia. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested in 2018 and imprisoned on espionage charges.
Though Whelan’s family issued a statement expressing their support for Griner’s safe return, Esiason did not sound pleased about the deal struck by the U.S. government.
“I’m telling you, more people feel that way than don’t,” Esiason said Thursday morning. “I can tell you that right now. I know that we’re all happy that Brittney’s home, like we said earlier on. But when you think about the magnitude of what we traded to get back a WNBA professional athlete, and left a Marine sitting there, whose family has been trying for years to get him out of there with nothing, nothing from the U.S. government.”
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The former NFL quarterback and CBS analyst continued, arguing that giving up Bout in exchange for Griner was not an equal deal for the U.S. to make.
“It’s not an even swap. It’s not,” Esiason said. “We all know what happened to Brittney should have never happened. We look so pathetic. And listening to our president talk about this is such a pathetic feeling. I want to be happy, but I can’t be.
“You got a guy who had a 25-year sentence, accused by the U.N. of getting involved in civil wars in Africa and killing millions of people, and you traded him for a WNBA superstar? Okay.”
The U.S. reportedly attempted to swap Bout for both Griner and Whelan, and Bout for Whelan alone, but in the end this was the only deal that would be accepted, according to ESPN’s T.J. Quinn. President Biden and Cherelle Griner, Brittney’s wife, spoke about Whelan and other wrongfully detained Americans in comments made at the White House on Thursday.
“We never forgot about Brittney. We’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years,” Biden said. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home. We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year. Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s, and while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we will not give up. We will never give up.”
“Today my family is whole, but as you all are aware, there’s so many other families who are not whole,” Cherelle Griner said. “BG’s not here to say this, but I will gladly speak on her behalf and say that BG and I will remain committed to the work of getting every American home, including Paul, whose family is in our hearts today as we celebrate BG being home, we do understand there are still people out here who are enduring what I endured the last nine months of missing, tremendously, their loved ones.”
