Laura Ingraham’s latest comments about athletes have, unsurprisingly, inspired many people to speak out against the Fox News host.
On Wednesday, Ingraham supported Drew Brees, who’s been openly slammed for saying he disapproves of NFL players who kneel during the national anthem.
On her Wednesday show, Ingraham said that the criticism of Brees is “stalinist.”
“He’s allowed to have his view about what kneeling and the flag means to him,” she said. “I mean, he’s a person, he has some worth I would imagine. This is beyond football, though. This is totalitarian conduct. This is Stalinist.”
However, in 2018, Ingraham condemned LeBron James for speaking out against racial injustices, telling the NBA player to “shut up and dribble,” and telling James and other vocal black athletes to “keep the political comments to yourselves.”
Ingraham laid into James after he expressed disapproval of Donald Trump, saying that Trump “doesn’t really give a fuck about the people.” At the time, she deemed James’ take as “unintelligible” and “ungrammatical.”
“It's always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball," she said. “Keep the political comments to yourselves. ... Shut up and dribble.”
On Thursday, James responded to Ingraham's most recent comments. “If you still haven’t figured out why the protesting is going on. Why we’re acting as we are is because we are simply F-N tired of this treatment right here!” he tweeted. “Can we break it down for you any simpler than this right here???? And to my people don’t worry I won’t stop until I see.”
Brees originally made his comments on Wednesday in an interview with Yahoo Finance! He later apologized in an Instagram post on Thursday, writing that he’s “sick” over how his remarks were “perceived.”
A number of athletes, including Donovan Mitchell, Naomi Osaka, and DeMarcus Cousins have also called out Ingraham for the obvious double standard, in which she fought for a white athlete's right to be political while condemning a black athlete for doing the exact same thing.
