Politicians shouldn’t accept donations from athletes, professional team owners or management in order to “keep politics and sports separate,” billionaire businessman and NBA owner Mark Cuban tweeted Sunday after President Donald Trump during the week took jabs at NFL players and NBA star Steph Curry.
Trump said NFL players who kneel during the national anthem in protest should be fired or suspended for disrespecting the country. He also uninvited Curry from visiting the White House with the NBA champion Golden State Warriors in February after Curry said he didn’t want to go.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell denounced Trump’s NFL remarks, and many sports stars criticized the president for his comments. Cuban told MSNBC the president has to accept the blowback.
“If the president’s going to say something condemning a person, an industry, a sport, then he’s got to be able to take the blowback that’s going to come back,” Cuban told NBC News' “Meet the Press.”
“So LeBron [James] and Steph and any athlete, any owner, it’s an open door now, and so they have every right for the same reasons to be able to say whatever’s on their mind,” he said. “Now we’ll be able to see if he can take it.”