Eric McCandless/ABC via Getty Images, Mat Hayward/Getty ImagesKen Jennings is standing by John Roderick after his Omnibus podcast co-host came under fire for a since-deleted Twitter thread.
According to The Wrap, Roderick shared 23 tweets this weekend about the time his 9-year-old daughter didn't know how to use a manual can opener on a can of baked beans and he tasked her with figuring it out on her own, which reportedly took "SIX HOURS on and off" and led to the child breaking down in tears while Roderick worked on a jigsaw puzzle nearby. While Roderick allegedly considered the incident a "teaching moment," many followers thought he took it too far.
Soon, Twitter users started criticizing Roderick and phrases like "Bean Dad" and "She's 9" began trending. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Roderick initially defended himself, even changing his Twitter bio to "Bean Dad since 2021."
"Somehow my story about teaching my daughter how to work out how to use a can opener and overcome her frustration got over onto a version of twitter where I'm being accused of child abuse," he reportedly wrote. "It's astonishing. My kid is fine everybody."
He allegedly added, "The best part about being ratio'd by these parenting concern-trolls is that they keep harping on how depriving my kid of baked beans for SIX HOURS is child abuse. Six hours is the length of time between meals. Lunch at noon, dinner at six. They're literally saying CHILD ABUSE."
Jennings, who recently apologized for his own "insensitive" tweets, stood up for him, as well. "Extremely jealous and annoyed that my podcast co-host is going to be a dictionary entry and I never will," the Jeopardy! champion tweeted on Sunday, Jan. 3, later adding, "If this reassures anyone, I personally know John to be (a) a loving and attentive dad who (b) tells heightened-for-effect stories about his own irascibility on like ten podcasts a week. This site is so dumb."
After a while, social media users began resurfacing Roderick's past tweets, including screenshots of posts that appeared to show Roderick defending the use of racist and homophobic slurs. Other social media users shared pictures of tweets Roderick allegedly shared that appeared to show anti-Semitic sentiments and referenced Hitler.
When asked about the anti-Semitic tweets, Jennings issued a reply. "If we're word-searching through old tweets now, it's pretty easy to find what he actually thinks about anti-Semitism," he wrote. "On our show he's always the pro-Israel one!"
A follower then responded by writing, "It's like you actually sat down and planned out how to write the worst response to this possible."
"Yeah, fair enough," Jennings added. "How about: there's no axis where any anti-Semitic screenshot represents any actual opinion I've ever heard from him."
Roderick has since deleted his Twitter account.
E! News has reached out to Roderick for comment.