Dallas Mavericks owner and businessman Mark Cuban has fired back at President Donald Trump’s criticism of NFL players who decline to stand during the national anthem, as well as the president’s decision to revoke a White House invitation to Golden State Warriors’ star Stephen Curry.
“If the president’s going to say something condemning a person, an industry, a sport, then he’s got to be able to take the blowback that’s going to come back,” Cuban told NBC News in an exclusive interview for “Meet the Press.”
“So LeBron [James] and Steph and any athlete, any owner, it’s an open door now, and so they have every right for the same reasons to be able to say whatever’s on their mind,” he said. “Now we’ll be able to see if he can take it.”
Backlash erupted over the weekend from both sports stars and team owners after President Trump took aim at the NFL players during a Friday night rally on behalf of Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama. And he sparked further uproar after a string of tweets about Curry and the NFL on Saturday.
Marc Short, the White House’s director of legislative affairs, defended the president on “Meet The Press” Sunday morning.
“Yeah, players have a First Amendment right,” said Marc Short. “But NFL owners also have a right. And that right is that these players represent their teams. And if the owners want to get rid of them, they should be allowed to get rid of them.”
When asked about the team owners who denounced the president’s words, claiming they were only propelling divisiveness, Short responded, “I think that the president is standing with the vast majority of Americans who believe that our flag should be respected.”
