Anthony L. Fisher
I ran into the Donald Trump-supporting legendary boxing promoter Don King in the hallways of Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena tonight, just after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's speech to the Republican National Convention (RNC).
With the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, standing a few feet away wrapping up an interview with Vice News, I asked King if he was familiar with Gary Johnson. King replied, "I haven't met Larry, but if he's a Libertarian, I want to meet him."
When asked what he thinks about libertarianism more broadly, King said, "I love it, because anyone that's looking for liberty, that's what our country was conceived in. A new nation, conceived in liberty dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal."
From there, as is his wont, King seemed to lose the narrative and went on an extended rambling diatribe about any number of things that have little to nothing to do with libertarianism.
"That part, leaving out the white woman is the biggest flaw in white supremacy," King said. "All men wouldn't be nothing without the woman. They started out in a position by saying 'all men, all men, all men,' and then they said about people of color, they were heathens, savages, incompetent, couldn't rise to the occasion. They did that to the white woman, she couldn't go to school, she couldn't get no trade, she couldn't do nothing except what her husband or her man said. That was the command. Nowhere in the biblical scripture does it say that."
King kept going, saying, "50 percent of the population was left out, they had no regard and they had to use their womanly guiles and schemes to prey on the man to do what she thinks is right, i.e. Abigal Adams talking to her husband who was ascending to the Continental Congress. Don't forget the ladies."
King went on like that for several minutes, after which I asked if he wished he was given the chance to speak at the RNC, which he was reportedly forbidden from doing by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus due to King's manslaughter conviction from 1966. King says he was contacted by the RNC tonight and asked to speak to convention but he refused because they "insulted" him.
"I prefer to speak with the people," King insists, but "if they sent Rip Van Winkle down here to ask me, then maybe I'd reconsider. You know, Rip Van Winkle slept through a revolution? Are you familar with Rip Van Winkle? He's the guy who went up on the mountain and went to sleep and when he came down a whole new nation had been conceived. The United States of America."
He then appeared to refer to his "dear friend" Donald Trump, without mentioning him by name, before adding "beware of the Greeks bearing gifts. I don't know what it meant but that's what Jesus and them said. You know what I mean?"
No, Mr. King, not really.
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