Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the latest target of Donald Trump, and a truce does not seem to be on the horizon. The GOP frontrunner did not like an op-ed from the legendary basketball player published by the Washington Post earlier this week.
Donald Trump is leading in the polls and could become an important factor in the 2016 presidential election, but he still finds time to answer his critics. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA great turned pundit, is the newest media personality getting attacked by the controversial billionaire.
On Wednesday, Abdul-Jabbar, 68, wrote a piece for the Washington Post in which he highlighted the differences between the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, is slowly rising in the polls and could give Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination. The success of the senator from Vermont has been compared to Trump’s ascendance on the Republican side. Two “outsiders” hell-bent on destroying the establishment aisle of their respective parties have turned this election cycle into one for the books.
Despite apparent similarities, Abdul-Jabbar, born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr., sees tremendous differences in the way the two men are carrying themselves on the campaign trail. Moreover, the NBA’s leading all-time scorer thinks Trump is a danger to the Constitution, he said:
Bad enough to alienate women in this way, but there’s even more insidious political crime here: attacking the First Amendment’s protection of a free press by menacing journalists.
Abdul-Jabbar did not stop there and added:
Attempting to bully the press to silence criticism of him is anti-American. He followed up this salvo on the First Amendment with a strike at the 14th Amendment, asserting that he’d like to deny those born in the country their citizenship. The biggest enemy to the principles of the Constitution right now is Trump.
After reading the op-ed, Trump decided to give the cultural ambassador a piece of his mind via a handwritten note. Trump’s message read:
Dear Kareem,
Now I know why the press always treated you so badly — they couldn’t stand you. The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again!
Best wishes,
Donald Trump
The Mycroft Holmes author is using the business mogul’s response to his article to prove a point, Trump is not fit to be president, while Sanders has shown “grace under pressure,” he claims.
The NBA Hall of Famer took his anti-Trump message to MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Thursday night where he predicted that the Republican frontrunner’s campaign will fade shortly. He stated:
“Well, you know, political campaigns are about style and substance. And Mr. Trump’s style is very attractive. The reason that he’s able to get all of this attention and the following that he does is because he says things in a way that inspires people or makes them feel good about the things he’s saying. But pretty soon, there’s going to have to be some substance. When we hear exactly what the substance is of what his programs are for his vision of America, I don’t think his candidacy will last very long beyond that.”
