Leftist commentator and former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is still attacking Trump and his “puppet” voters even as he explains why he was one of the few who attended Biden’s Inaugural event.
For his Jan. 21 editorial for the Hollywood Reporter, Abdul Jabbar told his readers that he attended Biden’s swearing-in ceremony because he was “honored to be an active part of the relaunching of the ship of state with a real captain at the helm.”
Abdul-Jabbar was one of the small number of people who actually attended the Biden inaugural in person and was part of the post-oath festivities that included actor Tom Hanks and others.
But, before he got to the wonderfulness of Biden, the former basketball star indulged more of his usual name-calling by saying that Trump and his voters — all 74 million of them — are like “brain-eating zombies.”
But, “Joe Biden is like that hopeful dawn in which those with brains still intact emerge from the darkness to reclaim our country and everything it stands for,” crowed Abdul Jabbar, whose real name is Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr.
Abdul Jabbar added that he was happy to go back to being ruled by “experts.”
A Biden presidency “is a return to the Age of Reason, in which decisions are made based on evidence from reliable expert sources,” he wrote.
Naturally, Abdul Jabbar invoked Lincoln in Biden’s inauguration.
Abdul-Jabbar was one of the celebrities who read sections of addresses from past presidents. That led the former NBAer to write wistfully, “In 1854, Lincoln spoke of ‘the monstrous injustice of slavery,’ so I couldn’t help but wonder what he might think about a Black man reading his words to the entire nation he so ably defended against insurrectionists.”
His name-calling was not entirely done, though. Without evidence, Abdul-Jabbar went on to claim that Trump somehow took people’s rights away. He accused Trump of working “hard to suppress the basic rights of so many groups, including women, LGBTQ+, Muslims, Blacks, Latinx, and immigrants.”
He also plied the false accusation that Trump “killed people” with his “lies, foot-dragging and incompetence” over the former president’s coronavirus policies.
Even though Biden hinted that Trump’s voters are terrorists, Abdul-Jabbar proclaimed the Biden administration to be an “end to divisiveness.”
Some are touting the inauguration as a kickstart ceremony to end the divisiveness in America. Even President Biden’s inaugural address emphasized his goal of unifying America. I’m all for that. But in fact, we are already more unified than reported. The so-called “divisiveness” that is chanted at us daily from every media megaphone across the political spectrum is not as wide or as evenly divided as they would have us think. The rioters who attacked the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 didn’t just vandalize property, kill a cop and call for the lynching of the vice president — they created a deep, ideological chasm between themselves and other conservatives who previously had been all lumped together as ‘Trump supporters.’
Abdul Jabbar then went on the attack against the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump.
“To me, these numbers show that the country is not divided in half,” Abdul-Jabbar exclaimed. “Only about a third are true-believing MAGA puppets who have been used as unwitting tools by billionaire Republicans and ambitious, unscrupulous Republican politicians looking to shove democracy into a meat-grinder if it means squeezing out a couple more cents of profit or power.”
The writer added that the names the “MAGA Puppets” call his side of the political aisle — such as socialists and radicals — are meaningless terms.
Abdul-Jabbar also pushed the claim that there was “no vote fraud.”:
‘Trump-supporting governors, judges, and election officials have all said there was no voting fraud,’ he continued. ‘Yet, that loyal Trump Third still howl at the election-fraud moon because no evidence will convince them. They will always be divided from the rest of the country because they don’t understand what the country actually stands for. They just want a despot to tell them what to think and do. Truth is, I don’t want to unify with those who don’t share the goals the country was founded on.’
In the end, though, Abdul-Jabbar insists that Americans agree with his far-left ideals.
“Maybe I’m dreaming too big. But I’m encouraged because a lot of Americans share my dream,” he concluded.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.