Former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar claims that President Trump’s coronavirus actions remind him of “Nazi” behavior in the Netflix series Hunters.
Abdul-Jabbar begins his March 18 op-ed slamming the president for his “blame-the-black-guy rhetoric,” claiming that the president is just like a “gleefully unrepentant Nazi,” while insisting that Trump’s “racist failures and lack of leadership will be his legacy.”
Abdul-Jabbar imagines that he sees parallels between Trump’s behavior and the recent Netflix series, Hunters, a story about Jews hunting down former Nazis who fled to America from Nazi Germany at the end of World War Two.
The Nazis who come to the U.S.A. are “planning a Fourth Reich built around a biological attack aimed at killing the poor, particularly people of color. Race- and class-cleansing made easy,” Abdul-Jabbar writes.
The show is not “far-fetched,” the former basketball player insists:
Far-fetched liberal posturing? Not if you’ve followed the Trump administration’s blame-the-black-guy rhetoric and foot-dragging behavior in response to the coronavirus pandemic, The scenes from White House pressers remind of the gleefully unrepentant Nazis in Hunters. Because for almost two months, Trump, like a sneering Bond supervillain, allowed the virus to spread knowing that poor communities and people of color would pay the greatest cost, economically and health-wise. It wasn’t until it started affecting the Mar-a-Lago crowd and their businesses (and, therefore, his re-election chances) that the president started to take it seriously.
The Hall of Famer goes on to claim that the Trump administration is lying by saying that testing for the coronavirus is covered by insurance. He also knocked the administration for not moving to make testing free to the uninsured. Indeed, Abdul-Jabbar claims that Trump has turned his back on “the poor” in this health scare.
Testing the poor was not a priority even though they, due to the accompanying health problems resulting from poverty and their reduced access to medical care, are more at risk than the middle- and upper-classes who are prioritized for testing. Nor is staying home from work an option for those who live on hourly wages, who must now choose between earning money for rent and food or possibly getting infected and spreading the disease to loved ones. Add to that the closure of schools, which creates a double burden for lower income families: They lose the benefit of school meals, and they are the group least likely to be able to stay at home to care for their children.
“Trump did not only delay public health efforts, he deliberately sabotaged them through his lies and actions,” the former player screeches. And Trump did all this just to “save money,” Abdul-Jabbar adds.
Abdul-Jabbar then regurgitates the false claim that Trump “eliminated the Pandemic Response Team” in the White House.
According to former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council Tim Morrison, Trump did not eliminate the office. He only reduced staff to the levels that existed before President Obama wildly increased its numbers to nearly 400 people.
Abdul-Jabbar went on to accuse the president of “shaking hands” in contravention to advice from experts. He adds that Trump is also unconcerned because only poor people are hit by the coronavirus or even the common flu. “So, no reason to be alarmed in Trump Tower.”
Then, Abdul-Jabbar accuses the “racist” president of “blaming non-whites” for his own failures:
Amid the public outrage over his lack of leadership, Trump began to distribute blame to his usual targets. Non-white people. For Trump, the blame falls directly on a black man, the Chinese and the Mexicans.
Oh, but Obama is loved, Abdul-Jabbar says, unlike the racist, evil, Nazi-like, cult leader that is Donald Trump.
“Trump will never get past the fact that Obama was loved because of his intelligence, compassion, humor and humanity. Trump isn’t loved but rather adulated, the way cult members mindlessly follow a stern dictatorial father-figure who tells them what to do and think. Like, well, Nazis,” the former player blathered.
Naturally, Abdul-Jabber is one of those leftists calling Trump a racist for calling the virus for the place in which it originated.
“The Trump administration and his Republican minions also took to publicly calling the coronavirus the ‘Chinese flu’ or the ‘Wuhan flu’ in an effort to blame nonwhites,” Abdul-Jabbar screams wholly ignoring the fact that the virus originated in Wuhan, China.
Abdul-Jabbar also praised the NBA for suspending its season and “leading the way” for Trump to follow to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Oddly, Abdul-Jabbar admits that calling people Nazis has “diluted the meaning” of the word. But he goes on to conclude that Trump’s actions prove he is “Nazi-adjacent.”
The Nazis in Hunters are powerful people in business and government, devoted to protecting only those they deem worthwhile humans. The government’s early response to coronavirus was not a Nazi conspiracy, but it was “Nazi-adjacent,” meaning that the same attitudes regarding race and class were being employed in determining who’s worthy of government protection. Despite the limp efforts of Pence and his administration lackeys to now praise Trump for his mythological early and decisive actions, his actual failure as a leader will forever be Trump’s legacy of shame.
In other words, you shouldn’t call people Nazis because it cheapens the political discussion. Unless you are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
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