Attack on LeBron shows Trump wants to use fear, divisiveness to win elections

By Jesse Jackson                     August 7, 2018
The run-up to the 2018 congressional elections has begun. With 40 Republican representatives deciding not to run again, the party’s majority in the House is at risk. President Donald Trump has announced he plans to stump for Republicans across the country, seeking to make the election a referendum on him. Characteristically, a centerpiece of his approach is to use race as a weapon to divide and distract us.

Once more, he’s gone after NFL players — largely African Americans — for their dignified, nonviolent protests against black lives lost to police violence. The president has portrayed them as unpatriotic and ungrateful. He’ll escalate those insults this fall.

Once more, he’s slurred immigrants as violent, using the MS-13 gang to rouse fears. He says he will close down the government this fall if he doesn’t get full funding for his wall, raising the heat on an issue used to divide us.

Days after LeBron James opened his I Promise school in Akron, Ohio, where his foundation is providing everything from school lunches to guaranteed tuitions for those who go to college, Trump questioned James’ intelligence and that of his CNN interviewer, Don Lemon (also an African American): “LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.” Trump’s also libeled Rep. Maxine Waters as a “very low IQ individual.”

This isn’t accidental or coincidental; it is intentional and instrumental. Trump has a long, ugly history of preying on racial fears for his own political benefit. He rose to national attention by trafficking the lie about Obama’s birth, arguing that he was an illegitimate president, born in Kenya. He launched his presidential campaign with a blast at Mexican immigrants as murderers and “rapists.” He reveled in assailing the gold star Muslim parents of a U.S. Army officer who died serving his country in the Iraq War.

During the Republican presidential primary campaign, Trump for a time declined to disavow the support of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, saying that he hadn’t done “research” on the group. (He later disavowed Duke and the Klan as a result of public outcry.)

As president, Trump scorned immigrants from what he called “s—hole countries” — Haiti, El Salvador and countries in Africa — while saying the U.S. needed more immigrants from countries like Norway.

Trump claims he is the “least racist person that you have ever met.” His record suggests otherwise. The Justice Department sued the Trump organization — including Trump’s father, Fred, the company chair and founder, and Trump himself, who was then serving as president — for systematic discrimination in refusing to rent to African-Americans. After a protracted legal battle, the Trumps agreed to a consent decree that required them to take concrete steps to end discrimination, including providing the New York Urban League with weekly listings of vacancies, allowing them to supply qualified applicants.

Later Trump gained notoriety for taking out full-page ads championing the death penalty for the Central Park Five, five young American Americans accused of raping and murdering a jogger in Manhattan’s Central Park. They were convicted in a wave of hysteria only to be released after years in prison when DNA evidence proved they were innocent of the crime. There is no indication that Trump ever apologized.

But the question really isn’t whether Trump is a racist or not. What is undeniable is that he purposefully plays on racial fears for his own political purposes, seeking to rouse “his base” and divide and distract working people.

Trump clearly enjoys scorning convention and violating norms. During the campaign, he boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still keep the support of his voters.

But we ought not adjust or accommodate to a president using his White House pulpit to spread fear, fan hatred and divide us.

LeBron James understands how destructive this behavior can be, noting about Trump:
“He doesn’t understand the power that he has for being the leader of this beautiful country. He doesn’t understand how many kids, no matter the race, look up to the president of the United States for guidance, for leadership, for words of encouragement …. ”

Later, James reflected:
“When I was growing up, there (were) like three jobs that you looked for inspiration. … It was the president of the United States, it was whoever was best in sports and it was the greatest musician at the time. You never thought you could be them, but you can grab inspiration from them. …

“And this time, right now, with the president of the United States, it’s at a bad time. While we cannot change what comes out of that man’s mouth, we can continue to alert the people that watch us, that listen to us, (that) this is not the way.”

Trump will make this election a test of what kind of country we are and what kind of country we want to live in. He believes that by spreading division and fears he will gain politically. We have to demonstrate that we are a better people than that. The provocations, the outrages, the slanders will continue. The only question is how we will respond to them.


As teams gear up for the NFL season, President Trump is reviving his destructive and diversionary attacks aimed at turning fans against players. The league office stepped in it by unilaterally declaring that players who do not want to stand during the national anthem should stay in the locker room. The NFL players association had little choice but to force negotiations over that insult. Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is a decent guy. But he stuck his foot in it, too, recently announcing that the Cowboys had to stand for the anthem and couldn’t stay in the locker room – or else. The league wisely told him to zip it while the policy was under negotiation. So it goes. So much of this is a false narrative. Fake news. Trump dishonestly insists that the players are disrespecting the flag. In fact, the players kneeling during the anthem were expressing a silent protest not against the flag, but against police brutality and the reality of structural racial inequality. Kneeling before the flag in silent, nonviolent protest is not disrespectful to the Stars and Stripes. Just the opposite. It is a sign of deference and respect, a call to honor what the flag is truly supposed to represent. Burning the flag is constitutionally protected but is a desecration. Burning a cross is a desecration. It is violent. Kneeling before the cross, or during the anthem, on the other hand, isn’t a desecration; it is a call for help. Colin Kaepernick was and is concerned about blacks being beaten and killed by police. He kneeled during the anthem to highlight how the values of the flag were being ignored on the streets. He wasn’t disrespecting the flag; he was protesting those who trample its values. He was being a patriot.   Now Trump wants to light the dynamite again. His politics prey and thrive on division. He hopes to divide us one against the other while his administration rolls back protections of consumers, workers and the environment, allows corporate lobbyists to rig the rules, and lards more and more tax cuts and subsidies on entrenched interests and the wealthy. So, he purposefully peddles the false narrative that the players are disrespecting the flag. Jones, who is a Trump supporter, isn’t a bad man. Beyond the playing field, beyond contracts, he has been a decent guy. He paid for the funeral of Cowboy great Bob Hayes. But Jones has allowed himself to be turned into Trump’s pawn in this diversion. The reality is that we would not have the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas were it not for those protesting for their rights. The victory of the Civil Rights Movement opened the way to a New South. The nonviolent protests and resistance pulled down the old barriers and walls in the South, clearing the way for the Cowboys and the Spurs and the Rockets of the New South, where blacks and whites could play on the same team and wear the same colors, where fans root for the colors of their team, not the color of the players’ skin. Successful protests – at the cost of far too many lives – finally ended slavery and apartheid in this society. We should be honoring the protesters, not distorting their message. Kaepernick was right to protest what is going on in our streets. He has paid a heavy penalty for expressing his views in a nonviolent and dignified fashion. One of the best quarterbacks in the league, he has effectively been banned, a blatant conspiracy that ought to constitute a clear violation of anti-trust laws. Kaepernick stands among giants. Curt Flood in baseball and Muhammad Ali during the prime years of his boxing life were also banned, but in the process, they changed sports and the country for the better. There have always been politicians who profit by appealing to our fears. There have always been politicians who seek to divide us for political gain. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go to fulfill the flag’s values of liberty and justice for all. The players expressing their views in nonviolent and dignified fashion aren’t disgracing the flag, they are expressing its values. Let us turn against those who would divide us and join together to make America better.