RUSH: Miami is next. Steve, hello, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, 20-year listener, first-time caller. Godspeed and hope your health gets great.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: You’re welcome, sir. Quickly, I wanted to just say one thing before I asked the question is that earlier you were talking about the American flag and trying to find out whether the guy had a Trump flag or American flag. I think it’s funny and telling that there’s less and less of a difference these days. If somebody has an American flag in their front yard it’s just assumed that he’s a Trump follower —
RUSH: Now, that’s true. That’s actually a good point. (laughing) And the Democrats are embarrassed to have the flag flying in their own yard because people might think they support Trump. No, it’s exactly right.
CALLER: So, the question I wanted to ask and the point I wanted to make is I’m in the sports analysis business, and I’ve been noticing something. And I just wanted to get it off my chest, and it’s with these NBA players. They seem to be, out of all the groups of athletes, the most un-American, spoiled, egotistical, maniacal, self-loving athletes I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re truly part of this elitist class that they’ve become, whether it’s the coaches speaking out against America, the players, including LeBron James, their most prominent player, constantly speaking off the top of his head about things he doesn’t know about.
Every other league has made plans to come back and put America first. You have baseball talking about coming back July 4th. You have football guaranteeing they’ll be back, and yet the youngest in-shape athletes in our whole country, which are the basketball players, who a lot of them have gotten the virus, none of them have even shown symptoms, they’re so concerned about coming back and it seems to be top-down from Adam Silver. And I know that normally you talk politics, but you also have a great opinion about sports. I’ve been listening to you for years. I wonder, you know, what your feelings are about these NBA players and how anti-American they’ve become.
RUSH: Well, I haven’t gone so far as to refer to them as anti-American. Frankly, you’re more informed than I on the NBA and their players. You said that you are a sports analyst?
CALLER: I’m in the sports analysis business, correct.
RUSH: Does that mean that you are on broadcasts and you —
CALLER: I am.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: For many years.
RUSH: And is it NBA or college?
CALLER: All sports.
RUSH: All sports. And you’re headquartered down in Miami?
CALLER: That’s correct.
RUSH: All right. The whole idea, I think of how sports comes back in the midst of this. I’m not trying to avoid your question, but the thing that amazes me most as I read and watch coverage is how the sports media — I don’t care whether it’s baseball or football, I don’t read much about the NBA, but I assume it’s happening there, too — don’t want to come back. They’re looking forward to there being no season. I’m saying, “You guys, this is your meal ticket.”
CALLER: Well, the NBA have guaranteed salaries, I want to remind you, not like all other sports. Football players have to play. There’s a bunch of players that get four or five hundred thousand a year or down. With NBA players and the average salary in the millions, and guaranteed salaries, right, what’s their incentive to come back?
RUSH: Well, if they get payed without coming back, yeah. Now, you’re speaking specifically of the NBA when you refer to them as anti-American?
CALLER: Oh, absolutely.
RUSH: Okay. Why? Is it the racial component stuff that they’re talking about? What is it?
CALLER: No. It’s coaches like Gregg Popovich and Kerr coming out and being so anti-Trump, you know —
RUSH: What do you expect them to do? Look at their players. They’ve gotta keep peace in the locker room. They’ve gotta keep control of the locker room. If they’re looking at their locker room and they think that 90% of the locker room hates Trump, what are they gonna do? Come out big, gigantic Trump supporters?
CALLER: I agree. But you’d think, you know, there’s no more better example of the American dream, right, than the NBA player. And yet to be so disconnected from the fact that, you know, it’s in this country that they’ve been given this opportunity to make more money than anyone, you’d think there’d be some gratefulness going around. To see that it’s not is —
RUSH: I don’t know. During the Kaepernick episode with the San Francisco 49ers and the NFL I kept hearing the players consider themselves to be modern equivalents of slaves.
CALLER: There was a bloc. But there were also a bloc of players that were vocal against that. You had Tom Brady mentioning his relationship with the president, and this happens in baseball and hockey and all other sports. There are some people, like America, it’s 50-50. There are some people that love the country and some people that are against the president and the country. And people try to separate the two, but listen. No one disliked Barack Obama more than me, but I didn’t consider myself not American during that time. He was the president. I didn’t vote for him. But I wished him well and hoped that he did good. He happened to not do good, but it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t rooting for the economy to go up during his presidency.
RUSH: That’s why I wanted him to fail. He had to fail if the economy was gonna succeed.
CALLER: You know what’s miraculous that’s going on right now? You have these Millennials in places like California and New York that never felt any reason to switch sides because nothing ever affected them. But take away their beach time and their park time and all of a sudden they’re jumping on board.
RUSH: Wait. You mean switch political sides?
CALLER: Yeah. In other words, a lot of the younger folk, you know, are socialist by nature. They go to mommy and daddy for money. So when our taxes get raised it doesn’t affect them.
RUSH: Or, let me pose one other possibility — they go to mommy because there isn’t a daddy.
CALLER: This could happen as well.
RUSH: How do you think the chickification of our culture is happening out there, dude?
CALLER: You’re absolutely right.
RUSH: Absolutely. You want to talk what’s wrong with the NBA, look there. Now, I understand – look, I’m not trying to diffuse your comment. I’m was aware before coronavirus, before that all happened, I know there’s a lot of hatred for Trump. I know Popovich. I know the stuff that he’s been saying. I know Steve Kerr. And I think it’s all about relating to the players in the locker room. And so much of the anti-Trump sentiment is players saying what they think everybody else that plays the game thinks, so it’s a way to fall in line and all that.
Look. I appreciate the call. I’m glad you got through.
Related Links