President answers racism charge with confusing tweet
‘Make America Great Again,’ he tweets as feud heats up Also tells U.S. troops ‘We’re really winning’
WASHINGTON— U. S. President Donald Trump kicked off Thanksgiving Day by replying to a tweet that said his latest Twitter feud is part of a racist pattern of attacking prominent Black Americans.
Trump’s response, tweeted at about 6:30 a.m.: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The tweet that prompted the response from the president came from Greg Sargent, who writes about politics for the Washington Post. Sargent had shared his opinion article about Trump’s latest tweetstorm related to LaVar Ball, whom the president has repeatedly called out for not thanking him properly for his role in resolving a shoplifting charge in China against Ball’s son.
In his piece published Wednesday, Sargent argued that Trump “goes out of his way to attack prominent African-Americans,” including Ball and professional football players.
“Trump’s rage-tweets about LaVar Ball are part of a pattern. Trump regularly attacks high-profile African-Americans to feed his supporters’ belief that the system is rigged for minorities,” Sargent wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
To which the president responded the following day with his campaign slogan. It’s unclear if Trump’s tweet was meant to agree with or acknowledge Sargent’s points that his behaviour on social media fits a racist pattern against Black Americans. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The president has spent the past few days engaging in a war of words with Ball, who has accused Trump of inflating his role in freeing his son, UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball, and two other teammates. The three were arrested for shoplifting while in Hangzhou for a tournament earlier this month.
Trump said that during his trip to Asia, he personally asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help resolve the case of Ball and his teammates.
After returning to the United States, Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to himself in the third person: “Do you think the three UCLA Bas- ketball Players will say thank you to President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!” Asked by ESPN later about Trump’s role in securing his son’s release, LaVar Ball said: “Who? What was he over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”
During a testy interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo Monday night, Ball again questioned Trump’s role.
“It wasn’t like he was in the U.S. and said, ‘OK, there’s three kids in China, I need to go over there and get them,’ ” Ball said. “That wasn’t the thought process.”
In response, the president fumed, often in the form of pre-dawn tweetstorms. At one point, he said he should have let LiAngelo Ball and his teammates stay in jail.
At about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday, Trump called LaVar Ball an “ungrateful fool,” who, if not for his personal intervention, would have spent several Thanksgivings with his son locked up in China.
“It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence — IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair.” PALM BEACH, FLA.— U.S. President Donald Trump thanked United States troops for their service on Thursday, assuring them “we’re really winning” against America’s foes as he celebrated Thanksgiving at his private club in Florida.
Using the occasion to pat himself on the back, Trump told deployed military members via a video conference they’ve achieved more progress in Afghanistan and against Daesh under his watch than in years of the previous administration.
“Everybody’s talking about the progress you’ve made in the last few months since I opened it up,” he told the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, whose members are conducting operations in Kandahar, Afghanistan. “We’re being talked about again as an armed forces — we’re really winning.”
Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump said: “We’re not fighting anymore to just walk around, we’re fighting to win, and you people are really, you’ve turned it around over the last three to four months like nobody’s seen, and they are talking about it, so thank you very much.”