Trump, National Basketball Association legend Jabbar clash

Trump responded and his words quickly proved Abdul-Jabbar’s point.

Former pro basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar got a taste of the Donald Trump treatment when he wrote an op-ed criticizing the Republican businessman for his demeanor on the campaign trail. “Is Donald Trump bringing big crowds?”

The note said: ‘Dear Kareem, Now I know why the press always treated you so badly – they couldn’t stand you.

Trump subsequently responded to the essay, with personal attacks that Abdul-Jabbar called “the best, though inelegant, support for my claims”.

When the basketball legend compared Trump to Bernie Sanders in the way they handle their campaigns, it must have struck a nerve.

By contrast, Abdul-Jabbar discussed Sanders’ response at an event last month when two African-American women “pushed in front of him to use the microphone to demand four and a half minutes of silence to honor the death of Michael Brown”. Abdul-Jabbar said what a lot of people have picked up on in recent weeks: that Trump has a bad habit of bullying journalists who ask hard-hitting questions.

As you can imagine, the article slams Trump for several things including his beef with Megyn Kelly saying the GOP candidate “attack[ed] the First Amendment’s protection of a free press by menacing journalists”, as well as Donald not caring about being politically correct! It was pretty critical of Trump, but did Trump really need to write him the note that he did?

And you can see Trump’s hand written response at this link.

Trump “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”, he wrote.

So with Bernie Sanders rising in the polls, Trump already up there, and the more archetypal candidates struggling to maintain media coverage, why don’t we let go our notions of what a “proper” candidate looks like. Besides, his voice was not silenced, but came back booming even louder: The next day, Sanders posted a sweeping policy of reform to fight racial inequality.