Indiana Hoosiers basketball coaching legend Bobby Knight joined Breitbart’s Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM to talk about Thursday evening’s rally for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.
“Well, I got there a little before he did and had a chance to talk with the people there, and it was really, really interesting.” Knight recalled. “I could sense a great anticipation. This place was jam-packed. I would imagine there were three, four thousand people there. I just scanned the audience, and I could see that on the face of everybody, anticipation of what St. Donald had to talk about.”
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“I think that it went extremely well in his favor. And the reason I think so is that I think people look at Trump as just another really concerned American citizen — like you are, and I am, and thousands of people are,” he told Boyle. “He had a great rapport with those people last night.”
Boyle asked Knight to turn his coach’s eye upon Trump and talk about the qualities that make him a “winner,” as he “fights these epic political battles.”
“You brought up something that not many people would, and it really impresses me,” Knight said, phrasing his reply in basketball coach terms:
We have an opponent, when I was coaching, whoever that opponent might be, it’s my responsibility to give the players the tools to beat that opponent. They have a good pressing defense. I’ve got to figure out a way to beat that press. Or they have a tough zone defense, or they have a post man who’s very difficult to play against. It’s my responsibility to see that my players have the tools to win that game — not they figure it out — I figure it out, and then they do the job.
Now, that’s what brings me to Donald Trump. I was a history and government major at Ohio State University, and I’ve spent a lot of time just fiddling around with who the next President’s going to be, over the years, or who would I like to see in that job, or whatever. And I’ve come to believe, without any reservation, in this era the best-prepared person for this job by far is Donald Trump.
The reason is because he has learned how to deal with problems. You know, he’s not just an American. He’s international. Everyone knows him. He has business all over the world. He’s provided jobs everywhere. And all of the things he’s done, like all of us, we run into problems. But I’ve studied his background, and I’ve looked at what he’s been into. And something went wrong here, but he took care of it, and he straightened it out, and he did something else over there.
I think the key thing to this next president is: number one, a guy who has a tremendous love of the good old USA. And secondly, that president brings with him or her the background and the tools to do the job that it’s going to take to get these problems straightened out. Nobody that I’ve talked to has even attempted to challenge the fact that no one matches Donald Trump in that regard.
Boyle described the “Trumpocrats” — Democrats who are abandoning Hillary Clinton to vote for Donald Trump because they don’t trust her — and asked Knight if he saw signs of such a movement in Indiana.
“Well, I hope so because I think that’s important to the future of our country,” said Knight. “I think the way he’s going to approach things, his relationship with the military will be absolutely beyond that of anything we’ve seen in a long way. There will be no president ever having a greater feeling for the military and all aspects of our military.”
“And you can bet the farm on two things: that there will never be a Benghazi situation under a Donald Trump administration, nor will there ever be money that is given to somebody in the Trump administration by foreign countries that they use for their own benefit. That kind of thing just won’t ever happen,” he declared.
“But even more important, I think, is the relationship he will have with our military,” Knight stressed. “What is more important to us than the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, our whole military establishment, and what those men, and those women, do for the United States is something beyond all of us as citizens, really can’t come to thank them enough for what they do. And there’ll be nobody in our governmental history that will be more inclined to deal and work with our military establishment than Donald Trump.”
Boyle asked if Hillary Clinton’s frequent disappearances from the campaign trail marked her as a “low-energy candidate,” and asked Knight what sort of energy level voters should seek in a president.
“I’m going to throw something at you, and then you tell me what you think of what I’ve said, OK?” Knight proposed:
Here’s what I’m going to throw at you: Donald Trump has been out every day — morning, noon and night — to let people see who he is. He isn’t hiding anywhere. He isn’t sitting back home anyplace. He’s out there letting people ask him questions. And when he gets done, he stands there, and a little old grandma comes up and asks her a question, he gives her an answer.
And he’s out there 24 hours a day, almost, letting people see who he is and giving people a chance to give this guy a look. How do we like this guy? We got to get him to quiet a little bit more, he walks flat, whatever the heck he does. You know, he has allowed America to see just exactly who he is and what he is, and he’s not coming out of the closet. He’s out there showing and talking about just what and who he is.
I think that’s a tremendous thing that he’s doing. He is saying, ‘Folks, here’s what I think, and here I am. I want you to just see what you think.’
Knight said it was astute for Boyle to observe that Hillary Clinton is spending much of the campaign “hiding from us.”
“It seems to me that we’ve got one candidate here that’s giving everybody a chance to take a look at him, and we’ve got another one where no one’s sure where the hell that candidate is,” Knight said. “I think that says a lot.”
He said being around Trump was always “interesting.”
“I’m a teacher. My mother was a teacher. I spent 40 years as a teacher. I think I have a pretty good grasp of people, and here is a guy who is thoroughly, totally in love with the United States of America, I think as much as anybody I’ve ever known,” he said of Donald Trump.
“His goal in life is to do something for America. And again, I say to anybody, you show me who can bring better tools to the job than Donald Trump can, and I’ll vote for that guy along with you,” Knight challenged.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Listen to the full audio of the interview above.