Donald Trump has spent the majority of his life making inappropriate comments. He has a long list of ugly racist comments including telling the members of “The Squad” who are all American citizens to “go back where they came from,” he referred to Haiti and African nations as ‘shithole countries,’ and who could forget his false “birtherism” claims against former President Barack Obama.
This week Trump let his hypocrisy show by condemning comments recently made by NBA superstar LeBron James as “racist” and “divisive, nasty, insulting.” Being banned from Twitter, Trump made his comments in a statement he released from his “Office of the Former President” at Mar-a-Lago.
“LeBron James should focus on basketball rather than presiding over the destruction of the NBA, which has just recorded the lowest television RATINGS, by far, in the long and distinguished history of the League… His RACIST rants are divisive, nasty, insulting, and demeaning. He may be a great basketball player, but he is doing nothing to bring our Country together!”
Trump’s statement came not long after James deleted a tweet by a police officer in which he called for accountability in the fatal shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio.
“YOU’RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY,” James w
rote in a post with a photo of Officer Nicholas Reardon, who was identified as the policeman who shot and killed Bryant.
Several Republican lawmakers were quick to condemn James’ tweet.
Sen. Tom Cotton claimed James’ tweet incited violence against Reardon.
“Lebron James is inciting violence against an Ohio police officer. This is disgraceful and dangerous. Is the NBA okay with this? Is Twitter?” Cotton tweeted.
Rep. Mike Loychik (R-Ohio) tweeted, “People like LeBron James and his friends on the left are driving good people away from careers in law enforcement. This is the exact OPPOSITE of how to improve policing,”
James later shared that he had deleted his tweet because it was “used to create more hate.”
He added that he is “so damn tired of seeing Black people killed by police. It’s about the entire system and they always use our words to create more racism.”
“I am so desperate for more ACCOUNTABILITY,” he continued.
James has been an extremely prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement over the past year. He has repeatedly made statements calling for justice in cases that involve Black Americans being killed by cops.
On Tuesday, Bryant was killed just moments before the jury announced a guilty verdict for all three charges in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in George Floyd’s death.
