President Trump hears everything.
So when the legendary running back Jim Brown praised the president while appearing on “The JT The Brick Show” on Fox Sports Radio last week, Trump heard.
“Thank you to the great @JimBrownNFL32, perhaps the greatest running back of all time, for your wonderful words and support. Since our meeting in New York, African-American UNEMPLOYMENT has reached the LOWEST LEVEL IN HISTORY. You get it!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Brown, inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, met with Trump in Trump Tower in 2016, and the former Cleveland Browns running back said he asked the then-president elect what he could do to help. Since then, he’s offered words of support and has said of his meeting, “I fell in love with him.”
In his radio appearance last week, Brown, now 82 years old, endorsed Trump for re-election in 2020, even though he said his stance will anger some in the “black community.”
“I should be criticizing Trump on every level because he does certain things that call for criticism. But when I look at television I see all these announcers become experts and they’re pointing their fingers, and they’re not doing a doggone thing but pointing their fingers, I find myself really pulling for the president,” Brown said.
“Now, that would make me very unpopular in the black community, very unpopular with a lot of Americans … but I think that there are certain good things that are coming out of this presidency because we’ve never seen anything like it,” Brown said, as reported by TMZ.
Brown said it’s his duty as a good American. “I believe that I have to work on myself first to be as good a person as I could be to back up my country as best as I know how.”
Several high-profile athletes — including NBA stars LeBron James and Stephen Curry — have ripped Trump, vowing not to go to the White House if invited. But other prominent blacks, especially rapper Kanye West, have praised the president.
“You don’t have to agree with Trump but the mob can’t make me not love him,” West wrote on Twitter in April — setting off a firestorm. “We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.”