President Obama Denounces Clippers Owner’s ‘Incredibly Offensive, Racist’ Comments

Los Angeles Clippers owner and all-around NBA-hole Don Sterling is the hot topic this weekend after a recording surfaced of him making racist remarks to his girlfriend, including a request that she not bring black people to Clippers games. Sterling’s racism is now a global issue, thanks to NBC News’ Chuck Todd, who asked President Obama to comment on the controversy during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia this morning.

“Mr. President, there’s a controversy surrounding some horrendous, racially-charged comments that an owner of the L.A. Clippers made,” Todd said, in a multiple part question. “I was wondering if you care to comment on that.”

After answering Todd’s first question, the President circled back to Sterling, and offered a brief explainer for the locals. “With respect to the statements by the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers — for our Malaysian audience, this is a sports team, basketball team in the United States,” he said. “The owner is reported to have said some incredibly offensive racist statements that were published I don’t think I have to interpret those statements for you; they kind of speak for themselves. When people — when ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk. And that’s what happened here.”

“I am confident that the NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, a good man, will address this,” the President continued. “Obviously, the NBA is a league that is beloved by fans all across the country. It’s got an awful lot of African American players. It’s steeped in African American culture. And I suspect that the NBA is going to be deeply concerned in resolving this.”

President Obama added that “The United States continues to wrestle with a legacy of race and slavery and segregation that’s still there — the vestiges of discrimination. We’ve made enormous strides, but you’re going to continue to see this percolate up every so often. And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why some statements like this stand out so much is because there had been — there has been this shift in how we view ourselves.”

President Obama has always had to walk the fine line between addressing issues of race, and making white people feel comfortable. In this case…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.