Trump reignites feud with LeBron James, calls him maybe a racist

Donald Trump said LeBron James was “maybe he’s a racist” in the Oval Office after being asked to choose between James and Michael Jordan, then said Jordan was “a guy that’s a friend of mine” whom he golfs with. The remark, delivered Friday, put an old feud back in the spotlight just as James had announced he would join the Philadelphia 76ers.

Trump’s exchange with James has stretched across years. In 2017, James said Trump used sports to “try to divide us,” and after the violence in Charlottesville that year, James called him the “so-called president.” Trump then attacked James on Twitter in 2018 after James said Trump was using sports to divide Americans, mocking James’s intelligence and setting off a wave of backlash and support for the NBA star.

The pattern matters because Trump has long used conflicts with prominent Black athletes as culture-war messaging. Turning a question about James and Jordan into an accusation about race let Trump cast the conversation as a test of loyalty, while elevating Jordan as a friend and golfing companion. The political payoff is familiar: it energizes supporters who respond to grievance politics, keeps race and celebrity fused in the same frame, and shifts attention away from the harder business of governing.

The latest comment also landed in the middle of James’s move to Philadelphia. NBC10 Philadelphia said Trump’s remark followed James’s announcement that he would join the 76ers, and NewsNation described the move as James’s “next, and seemingly final, team change.” CNN called Trump’s comments an escalation of the long-running feud. Within hours, reaction spread online, and Ben Crump posted about the exchange on Instagram the same day.

Trump’s wording was blunt, but the political script was familiar. By elevating Jordan as a friend and questioning James’s motives in the same breath, Trump turned a sports comparison into another loyalty test, keeping the feud useful for a base that rewards confrontation over restraint.