It turns out LeBron James had a lot more to say to President Donald Trump than “U bum.”
In a video message posted to Twitter Saturday afternoon, the NBA star followed up his previous tweet defending the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry with a longer, more nuanced case against the president.
“I think it’s basically at a point where I’m kind of just a little frustrated, because this guy that we’ve put in charge has tried to divide us once again,” James began. “And obviously we all know what happened with Charlottesville and the divide that caused. Now, it’s even hitting home for me more because he’s now using sports as the platform to try to divide us.”
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“We all know how much sports brings us together, how much passion it has, how much we love and care, and the friendships and everything that it creates,” James continued. “For him to try to use this platform to divide us even more, it’s not something I could stand for and it’s not something I could be quiet about.”
Over the past 24 hours, Trump has called on NFL owners to fire players who, like Colin Kaepernick, refuse to stand for the National Anthem and “disinvited” Curry from attending a White House ceremony he previous said he would not attend. Curiously, a story about Curry’s comments aired on Fox & Friends about 20 minutes before Trump tweeted his response. James said he “can’t stand” for the president treating one of his NBA “colleagues” that way.
A week earlier, after Jemele Hill called Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said from her official podium that the ESPN host had committed a “fireable offense.”
“We’ve got Jemele Hill and Colin Kaepernick and all these people are speaking up, and it’s for the greater cause,” James added. “It’s for us to all come together. It’s not about a division, it’s not about dividing, we as American people need to actually just come together even more strongly. This is a very critical time, and me being in the position that I am, I had to voice this to ya’ll. Love ya’ll, man.”
Since the Cleveland Cavaliers forward published his video via Uninterrupted, President Trump has posted tweets attacking John McCain and Roger Goodell, but so far at least, he has had nothing to say in response to LeBron James.
