President Trump rebuked after calling LeBron James ‘racist’ because ‘he doesn’t like [me]’

The president revived his years-long feud with the NBA superstar, accusing James of being “maybe a racist” just hours after the basketball icon announced his move to the Philadelphia 76ers.

President Donald Trump personally insulted LeBron James in the Oval Office on Friday, calling James “racist” because the four-time NBA champion “doesn’t like” him.

“He’s maybe a racist,” Trump told Fox News reporter Peter Doocy when asked to weigh in on whether James or Michael Jordan is the “best ever” in the NBA.

Trump, saying he prefers Jordan, said, “I think LeBron is, maybe he’s a racist. But maybe he doesn’t like Trump, I don’t know.” He said of Jordan, a six-time NBA champion, “That’s a friend of mine. Play golf with him. He’s a really good guy.”

Answering the question of which basketball superstar is more deserving of “GOAT” status, the 80-year-old president said, “I only like people that like me, so I would say Michael Jordan all the way.”

Trump’s remarks came just hours after James announced he will play for the Philadelphia 76ers this upcoming season for what will likely be the final stretch of his 23-year NBA career. As theGrio previously reported, James signed a two-year contract to the tune of $8 million.

The president’s personal attack on James is not surprising, given his years-long feud with the NBA star, dating back to his first term in office, when NBA and NFL athletes protested the national anthem in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, which called for the end to killings of unarmed Black Americans, namely by police officers. In 2018, Trump called for the athletes to be fired, asserting that maybe they “shouldn’t be in the country.”

When asked that same year about Trump’s remarks during a CNN interview with then-host Don Lemon, LeBron James rebuked Trump for using sports to “divide” the country and told Lemon, “I would never sit across from him.” In response, Trump wrote on Twitter, “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!”

Trump’s latest remarks about James quickly went viral online, garnering ridicule from critics who pointed out that Trump himself has repeatedly taken actions that were deemed racist, from calling Haiti and African nations “shithole countries” that “all have AIDS,” to spreading the birtherism lie that America’s first Black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. In February, the president posted a video depicting Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes, a decades-long racist stereotype used to dehumanize Black Americans.

“The guy with a 50-year track record of racism has no business calling anyone a racist,” said political commentator Keith Boykin, a former White House staffer for President Bill Clinton.

Khalil Thompson, a political strategist and founder and executive director of Win With Black Men, told theGrio, “The policies and the position that this particular president has taken have shown time and time again that, whether for lack of just not knowing, which I don’t think is the case, he’s being racist.” He added, “He may not be one, but all the things he’s doing sure do look like he is one.”

When theGrio read out Trump’s remarks verbatim, he replied, “You read that from the president of the United States? That sounded to me like a toddler not getting what they wanted, and only wants to talk to people who are their friends.”

Thompson, who said he yearns for the years past when Americans could disagree and maintain respect, said he was “ashamed that our children, who are growing up in this era, are looking at [Trump] as what you should espouse to be in the highest office of the land.”

If Trump were Obama, former President Joe Biden, or former Vice President Kamala Harris, Thompson said Republicans’ reactions to Trump’s repeatedly controversial and racist remarks would be very different.

He told theGrio, “I find it funny, the hypocrisy of Donald Trump.”