Donald Trump has been reduced to using infamous boxing promotor Don King as a character witness. The two men do seem strangely similar. I hadn’t thought about it, but King was kind of a black Trump before Trump. Superficially successful, charismatic, ostentatiously patriotic, a great showman, but ultimately a tremendous manipulator and crook, and a fraudster who ripped off everyone he could.
Don King seemingly got away with anything provided he literally wrapped himself in an American flag and constantly boasted about how great it is to live in America.
In that sense, he was the complete opposite of Mohammad Ali who refused to fight brown people in Vietnam when his own country was oppressing brown people at home. Ali loved his country, but he was willing to tell it hard truths, and he would never shy away from criticism by resorting to cheap nationalistic appeals.
King promoted not only Ali, but also heavyweight champs Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson. All three of them eventually took him to court.
Tyson was particularly succinct when asked about King.
“He’s a wretched, slimy, reptilian motherfucker. This is supposed to be my ‘black brother’, right? He’s just a bad man, a real bad man. He would kill his own mother for a dollar. He’s ruthless, he’s deplorable, he’s greedy … and he doesn’t know how to love anybody.”
Just like Trump, King routinely underpaid on contracts and forced people to settle for less by using high-priced lawyers.
King once took the Fifth when asked about his connections to mobster John Gotti. Trump, on the other hand, just claims he has no memory of paling around with Gotti associates.
Yeah, these two guys are peas in a pod.
And they both have outlandish hair.
I want someone to start a meme going around by repeatedly asking, “If Donald Trump is elected, will he be our first bald president?” I think it would occupy 100% of his time and attention.
But the hilarious thing is that King didn’t actually endorse Trump. So Trump is going around saying Don King endorsed him and Don King says he didn’t, and Trump keeps saying it. Don King says he has no political opinions of his own and he’s a “Republicrat”, which is also hilarious to me because I’ve never seen that term used in a positive context.
King definitely is Trump-level nasty and absurd, but he’s not giving up his coveted endorsement so easily. I hope Trump gets asked about this in his next interview: “Why do you think you can say Don King endorses you when Don King has explicitly said he does not endorse you? Do you simply not bother to ascertain facts before saying things in public? Would you continue to make statements that are clearly untrue if you became President, regardless of the potential consequences? And why do think claiming endorsements that you haven’t received doesn’t reinforce Hillary Clinton’s critique of you that you’re mentally unfit to be President?”
It seems from the evidence of the last few weeks that it is easier to humiliate and shame the leadership of the Republican Party than it is the media. We need the Trump campaign to skate the surface of egregious and truly awful until the media cough up ‘both-siderism’ or their own skulls, whichever comes first.