LeBron advised to butt out
FOX News host Laura Ingraham on Friday insulted LeBron James’ intelligence and said he and fellow basketball star Kevin Durant should not express their political opinions, comments that drew a strong rebuke from James’ former team-mate Dwyane Wade.
Ingraham called recent statements James had made about President Donald Trump ‘‘barely intelligible,’’ in a segment on her Fox News show The Ingraham Angle.
Then, after showing a clip featuring James speaking about the president with Durant and the ESPN host Cari Champion, she asked: ‘‘Must they run their mouths like that?’’
Wade, in a tweet, said that Ingraham’s remarks underscored the way that racist speech has flourished under Trump.
‘‘They use to try and hide it,’’ said Wade, a close friend of James, referring to Ingraham’s comments. ‘‘Now the president has given everyone the courage to live their truths.’’
James, Durant and Champion are black, and commentators noted online that the word ‘‘they’’ in her sentence, as well as her comments about James’ intelligence, came across as racist.
Ingraham belittled James for leaving high school early to enter the NBA and said that it was unwise to ‘‘seek political advice from someone who gets paid a hundred million dollars a year to GETTY IMAGES bounce a ball’’. ‘‘You’re great players but no one voted for you,’’ she concluded, addressing James and Durant. ‘‘Millions elected Trump to be their coach. So keep the political commentary to yourself, or as someone once said, shut up and dribble.’’
Ingraham’s comments referred to a clip of James and Durant criticising the president from James’ video platform Uninterrupted. James spoke about his experience as an AfricanAmerican and then, prompted by Champion, repeated his past criticisms of Trump.
Durant then spoke about how he learned life skills from basketball and compared Trump to a ‘‘bad coach’’. The New York Times