Volatile San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich unleashed a torrent of hatred for President Donald Trump during a Sunday night phone call to Dave Zirin, sports editor and resident communist for The Nation magazine. The Washington Post, Yahoo! Sports and Boston Globe, among others, jumped all over this golden opportunity to join in the roasting of the president.
According to Popovich's rant, the president is a deranged idiot who has no brain and is unable to unify the people during this time of civil unrest:
“It’s unbelievable. If Trump had a brain, even if it was 99 percent cynical, he would come out and say something to unify people. But he doesn’t care about bringing people together. Even now. That’s how deranged he is. It’s all about him. It’s all about what benefits him personally. It’s never about the greater good. And that’s all he’s ever been.”
It’s clear to Popovich what needs to be done. The president should say, "Black lives matter." He can’t and won't do that because he wants to mollify "a small group of followers who validate his insanity."
President Trump is not a leader and he can’t do anything to put America on a positive path, says the man known as "Pop" -- a former NBA champion whose leadership took the Spurs to a dreadful 27-36 record when the season stopped in March. Pop is a man who says he can direct us to that positive path because he is a leader. How would he unify us? We don't know because instead of offering any substantive leadership, he's obsessed with tearing the president to shreds:
“He’s not just divisive. He’s a destroyer. To be in his presence makes you die. He will eat you alive for his own purposes. I’m appalled that we have a leader who can’t say, ‘Black lives matter.’ That’s why he hides in the White House basement. He is a coward. He creates a situation and runs away like a grade-schooler. Actually, I think it’s best to ignore him. There is nothing he can do to make this better because of who he is: a deranged idiot.”
Pop doesn't ignore Trump and isn't following his own advice. He demands more leadership so the "mass demonstrations can’t be used by people for other means. We can limit the bad, but only if things are organized better.”
Popovich also unloaded criticism on white people and three U.S. senators, all of them Republicans:
“The thing that strikes me is that we all see this police violence and racism, and we’ve seen it all before, but nothing changes. That’s why these protests have been so explosive. But without leadership and an understanding of what the problem is, there will never be change. And white Americans have avoided reckoning with this problem forever, because it’s been our privilege to be able to avoid it. That also has to change.”
Popovich enjoins Senators Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell to his attack on the president. Graham and Cruz previously called Trump "unfit," but now they choose to be "invisible" in the "face of this carnage:"
"In the end, what we have is a fool in place of a president, while the person who really runs the country, Senator Mitch McConnell, destroys the United States for generations to come. McConnell has destroyed and degraded our judicial system. He has tried to destroy health care. He’s destroyed the environment. He’s the master, and Trump’s the stooge, and what’s funny is that Trump doesn’t even know it. Trump’s always wanted to be part of the in-group, but McConnell is an in-group of one, and Trump plays the fool.”
Popovich has been attacking the president ever since he took office in 2017 and previously called him a "soulless coward."
