NBA icon horrified by Trump: “insult to all black people”
Basketball icon Charles Barkley is heavily charged about former US President Donald Trump – and vented his anger in a controversial TV interview. The former NBA MVP even threatened the politician’s supporters with a beating.
The bone of contention was Trump’s appearance at a gala of the Black Conservative Federation, an association of conservative blacks in the USA. Trump, once again the Republicans’ most promising candidate for the US presidency, had wooed African-American voters there in an idiosyncratic way.
Trump boasted that the mug shot of his arrest in August 2023 was well received by African Americans and was a popular T-shirt motif in the community – which he interpreted as encouragement. He also compared his own charges to the centuries of discrimination against black US citizens.
This infuriated Barkley.
Barkley after Trump speech: “I’ll punch him in the face”
On his show King Charles on CNN, the former power forward said, after a long sigh: “If I see a black person walking around with Trump’s mugshot, I’m going to punch him in the face.”
When presenter Gayle King, surprised, tried to reprimand him (“Charles, you can’t say that and you don’t mean it either”), the 61-year-old added: “I’m absolutely serious.”
King countered again (“And then you get arrested. What happens then?”) – and received a response from the eleven-time All Star: “Then I’ll bail myself out and celebrate.”
The 1993 MVP, who played in the NBA for the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets, then explained that his statements should not be taken literally (“Now seriously…” and gave Trump a sharp answer in terms of content.
“If I had been at that event, I would have gotten up and left,” Barkley complained: “It was an insult to all black people. Comparing the history of how we’ve been discriminated against with his situation… First, he’s a billionaire, and second, he’s being accused of things he’s done wrong. […] Comparing that to the suffering of black people: that offends me.”
Trump is on course for victory in the current US primaries and is likely to challenge incumbent Joe Biden from the Democrats again in the fall.
2024-03-05 17:26:12
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