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The Commanders fired an executive Thursday after the man was recorded letting his guard down on what he thought were dates and apparently disparaging NFL players, fans, and executives.
The executive, Rael Enteen, was recorded by a woman working for longtime far-right prankster James O’Keefe.
The videos show Enteen, the team’s VP of content, insulting “mouth-breathing” fans and “homophobic” players.
(Update, Sept. 5, 10:53 a.m. ET: The Commanders fired Enteen on Thursday after initially suspending him Wednesday.)
Though O’Keefe has an extensive history of selectively editing videos or outright doctoring them, the Commanders distanced themselves from Enteen in a statement Wednesday.
“The language used in the video runs counter to our values at the Commanders organization,” the team said in a statement to Front Office Sports. “We have suspended the employee pending an internal investigation and will reserve further comment at this time.”
Enteen’s LinkedIn page says he was hired by Washington as senior director of content in 2020—before current owner Josh Harris purchased the team—after working for the XFL and the New York Jets. He locked his social media accounts after the publication of the video and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the videos, published on social media by O’Keefe on Wednesday, Enteen answers a series of increasingly direct questions about his workplace while being recorded.
A woman off-camera repeatedly asks Enteen about his job duties, history, and workplace. She is identified in the video only as an operative for O’Keefe’s company.
“Most of the fans, I would say, are high-school-educated alcoholics,” Enteen says, adding that they’re “mouth breathers.”
The videos show Enteen calling NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a “$50 million puppet” and saying Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is the true commissioner. Enteen appears cynical about the league’s “performative” social justice initiatives and says Jones “hates gay people and Black people.”
He said the team’s Black players are “from a community that is inherently very homophobic” and repeatedly referred to players suffering from head injuries.
Perhaps the most interesting moment in the videos comes when Enteen appears to admit being pressured into lying through the team’s official social media accounts. He recalled an infamous incident in 2021 when sewage rained on Washington fans and he had to tweet that it was actually water, spin that he referred to as “state-run media.”
The video advertises O’Keefe’s “American Swiper” campaign to hire people to use dating apps to entrap and record unwitting subjects.
For years, O’Keefe produced similar videos of liberals and Democratic operatives for Project Veritas, but he was fired in 2023 after the organization’s board said he spent an “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries.”
Last year, the Westchester, N.Y., district attorney said it was criminally investigating O’Keefe. At the time, his lawyer said the investigation stemmed from “disgruntled former employees of Project Veritas who had a problem with their CEO using too many car services to pay for fundraising efforts which paid their salaries.”
