Bill Belichick defended his girlfriend Jordon Hudson after she was accused of taking over his CBS interview to promote his new book.
“I was surprised when unrelated topics were introduced, and I repeatedly expressed to the reporter, Tony Dokoupil, and the producers that I preferred to keep the conversation centered on the book,” Belichick said Wednesday in a statement provided to HuffPost. “After this occurred several times, Jordon, with whom I share both a personal and professional relationship, stepped in to reiterate that point to help refocus the discussion. She was not deflecting any specific question or topic but simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track. Some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we have been open about the fact that Jordon and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021.”
In the statement, Belichick, the head football coach of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he agreed to the interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” to promote his book “The Art of Winning – Lessons from My Life in Football” and that he wanted the interview to focus “solely on the contents” of the book.
Most of Sunday’s eight-minute segment does; however, the show’s co-host Tony Dokoupil does ask Belichick about Hudson, Belichick’s girlfriend nearly 50 years his junior. At one point, Hudson, who was sitting in on the interview, interrupts to tell Dokoupil that Belichick won’t answer a question about how the two met. Viewers accused Hudson of controlling Belichick and the interview.
“The final eight-minute segment does not reflect the productive 35-minute conversation we had, which covered a wide range of topics related to my career. Instead, it presents selectively edited clips and stills from just a few minutes of the interview to suggest a false narrative – that Jordon was attempting to control the conversation – which is simply not true,” Belichick said in his statement.
In a statement, a CBS News spokesperson said they agreed to speak to Belichick in a “wide-ranging interview.”
“There were no preconditions or limitations to this conversation,” the spokesperson said in the statement. “This was confirmed repeatedly with his publisher before the interview took place and after it was completed.”
On Tuesday, Hudson posted an email that appeared to be from Belichick on her Instagram page. In it, he wrote that the media will want to “focus on whatever negatives they can extract from the book.”
