Fox News’ Laura Ingraham went on the air on Thursday night to defend President Donald Trump after LeBron James and Kevin Durant spoke critically about the president in a podcast with ESPN’s Cari Champion on James’ UNITERRUPTED.
Champion asked James about his tweet from last year in which he called President Trump a “bum” after Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors were uninvited from visiting the White House to celebrate last year’s NBA Finals title.
‘Shut up and dribble’ — Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to LeBron and Kevin Durant after their criticism of President Trump pic.twitter.com/0BlokQDIIl
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 16, 2018
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“The climate is hot,” James said. “The number one job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn’t understand the people. And really don’t give a f— about the people. When I was growing up, there was like three jobs that you looked to for inspiration or you felt like these were the people who could give me light. It was the president of the United States, it was whoever was the best in sports and then it was, like, whoever was the greatest musician at the time. You never thought you could be them, but you could grab inspiration from them. If there was a neighborhood African American cop, and he was cool as hell coming around, I felt like I could be him. I never felt like I could be the president of the United States, but I grabbed inspiration from that. At this time right now, with the president of the United States, it’s at a bad time, and while we cannot change what comes out of that man’s mouth, we can continue to alert the people that watch us, that listen to us, that this is not the way.”
Kevin Durant added to James’ comments by saying, “When you’re talking about leadership and what’s going on in our country, it’s all about leadership. And I learned that playing basketball. I learned a lot of life skills from playing basketball. … You need to encourage people and that’s what builds a great team, and I feel like our team as a country is not ran by a great coach.”
Ingraham offered her thoughts on her show and called it a “barely intelligible” and “ungrammatical take.”
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SOURCE: Sports Illustrated, Chris Chavez