Not one to be outdone in barbs and insults, Howard Eskin, who has been needling Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney for months over the soda tax, fire back Saturday morning to the "fraud of a mayor's" rant about him on his own station.
Eskin started his broadcast on SportsRadio WIP by sarcastically calling it "the show no one listens to," a reference to a dig leveled Thursday by Kenney, who said on the station's morning show Thursday, "First of all, he's in that prime spot of 8-10 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Awesome," adding Eskin's show should be called "The Sound of One Hand Clapping."
Kenney ripped into Eskin the morning of the first day of the NFL draft in Philly, responding to the host's mounting criticism about the tax, which placed a 1.5-per-ounce fee on sugary beverages to pay for city programs.
"He's fixated on this," Kenney said Thursday. "My brother was listening to the show, I don't know why, but he called me and said 'Is WIP still a sports station?'"
"Your brother might be one of the worst mayors in the city of Philadelphia in the last 50 years," Eskin countered Saturday.
Broadcasting from the Fresh Grocer on 69th Street in Upper Darby — "where you're not going to pay the beverage tax, the everything tax" — Eskin continued his Trump-esque campaign against the mayor, saying he has "bleeped up this city."
"Jim Kenney doesn't care about me, yet he went off about me for three minutes on the morning show," Eskin said. "He's a bully, I know he's not a good mayor, I know he's not good for the city of Philadelphia."
Eskin also laid into his coworkers Angelo Cataldi, Al Morganti (both PhillyVoice contributors) and Reah Hughes for giggling throughout Kenney's roast, calling them "laughing hyenas."
"I'm disappointed in those guys, because they had the opportunity to ask him some questions."
With the NFL draft being held on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway from Thursday until Saturday, Eskin has found a new issue with Kenney, further utilizing his sports radio slot as a political megaphone.
He went off about how the NFL and city's projections for attendance and economic impact were lies, and that while he's happy many city residents had fun at the event, he thinks Philadelphians were "misled and deceived" about the event.
And, of course, Eskin reiterated how he wants to challenge "one-term" Kenney in the 2019 mayoral race, acknowledging that as a resident of the suburbs he would have to move into the city first.
"I'm thinking seriously about running for mayor, and I would win. Because people don’t want him."