I guess the Pelaton Wife is out there somewhere having the last laugh. Greg Glassman, the founder and CEO of fitness brand giant CrossFit, is resigning from his position effective immediately. As with so many stories in the modern era, it was all because of a couple of tweets that were deemed to be anywhere from “insensitive” to outright racist by the woke crowd. But as soon as you read into the details, it’s tough to get a read on what, if anything, Glassman was thinking when he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter at… the University of Washinton Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation? As Twitter wars go, this has to be one of the strangest matchups on record. And yet, Glassman wasn’t in trouble for his specific complaint against the IHME, but rather the fact that he invoked the name of George Floyd in his attack for no apparent reason whatsoever. (NBC News)

The founder and CEO of CrossFit, who has come under fire for tweets about the death of George Floyd and public health orders surrounding the coronavirus, announced his retirement Tuesday.

“On Saturday I created a rift in the CrossFit community and unintentionally hurt many of its members,” Greg Glassman, who started the fitness company, said in a statement announcing his retirement.

Glassman responded to a tweet Saturday by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, that called racism and discrimination “critical public health issues that demand an urgent response.”

Glassman responded: “It’s FLOYD-19.”

Somebody is going to have to help me sort out exactly what Glassman was thinking here. He was apparently incensed when the IHME sent out a tweet saying that racism is a “critical public health issue that demands an urgent response.”

Racism and discrimination are critical public health issues that demand an urgent response. #BlackLivesMatter

Read our director’s statement: https://t.co/kZkP2s82oV pic.twitter.com/0A7VEqoHkq

— Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) (@IHME_UW) June 6, 2020

This ticked off Glassman for some reason. And even though the IHME didn’t even mention COVID-19, he decided to tweet back at them that it was actually “FLOYD-19.”

https://twitter.com/CrossFitCEO/status/1269404726581288960

We start to catch a glimmer of what Glassman is angry about in his followup tweet… or at least I think we do. He’ complaining about quarantines being ineffective and mocking the IHME for suggesting there’s a “cure” for racism.

https://twitter.com/CrossFitCEO/status/1269691293958991877

Your failed model quarantined us and now you’re going to model a solution to racism? George Floyd’s brutal murder sparked riots nationally. Quarantine alone is “accompanied in every age and under all political regimes by an undercurrent of suspicion, distrust, and riots.” Thanks!

He references Floyd’s “brutal murder,” so it doesn’t sound like he’s mocking either the victim or the resultant riots. He’s clearly upset about quarantines (and he’s hardly alone in that) but that brings us back full circle. If the quarantine model is what he’s upset about, what on Earth prompts him to morph COVID into Floyd’s name in response?

Some media analysts are suggesting that his actions prior to those tweets point to some sort of animus against the protesters and the response to Floyd’s death. According to Buzzfeed, earlier that day the CEO was on a conference call arguing against putting out a statement in support of the protesters. But yet again, while he could certainly be described as “insensitive” by 2020 progressive standards, it’s hard to pin down precisely what his problem is or if he’s even fully coherent.

He starts off by saying “we’re not mourning for George Floyd.” He later goes on to say that he doesn’t think many people “in any community” are really mourning for Floyd. He complicates things further by dredging up some conspiracy theory about Floyd having been intentionally targeted and murdered to “silence” him about a counterfeiting ring. Huh?

If Glassman had simply said that he didn’t want the company getting dragged into the politics surrounding Floyd’s death so there wouldn’t be a public statement, I could see that as being a defensible position. Saying nothing might anger some people, but it’s better than saying something and having it turn out to be the wrong thing (in the eyes of the woke patrol, anyway). But between his bizarre FLOYD-19 tweet and the counterfeiting – murder conspiracy talk, he sounds more deranged than anything else. Either way, whether he’s harboring some racist sentiments of simply losing his grip on the narrative, perhaps it was time for him to step aside anyway for the sake of salvaging his brand.