Abdul-Jabbar tangles with Trump: Who's got game?

Donald Trump reacts to a newspaper opinion piece by former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who replies with a chess analogy.

|
Photo courtesy of Iconomy LLC
In this courtesy photo, former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is pictured at the chess board.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s scathing response to criticisms by basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has set pundits and strategists back on their heels wondering if anyone can checkmate him in the polls.

Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA's all-time leading scorer, former cultural ambassador for the United States, chess aficionado, and author, penned a criticism of Mr. Trump’s lack of “grace under pressure” in The Washington Post.

In the op-ed, Abdul-Jabbar posited that “how each man responded [to pressure] revealed the type of person he is and the type of president he would make.”

The conclusion he reached is that Bernie Sanders “opened immense new possibilities as a compassionate person and serious candidate for president,” while Mr. Trump, “authored his own doom.”

In a hand-written note over a copy of Abdul-Jabbar’s piece, Trump stated, “Kareem – Now I know why the press always treated you so badly – they couldn’t stand you. The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again!”

Abdul-Jabbar responded to the Monitor in an email Friday, likening Trump to a trash-talking chess player with no game.

"Trump is that chess player who likes to make every move with an aggressive slam of his piece on the board while shouting, 'Bam!' This will intimidate the novice and rattle his game,” Abdul-Jabbar says. “But it's ineffective against the more experienced player who welcomes such players because they are usually weak on strategy and therefore easily defeated. It's the same in basketball. The guy trash-talking all the time is usually the most insecure about his abilities."       

The question for pundits is why Abdul-Jabbar’s pronouncement isn’t happening to Trump.

New York University professor and pundit Fraser Seitel says in an interview, “He [Trump] calls it like it is. So if he thinks Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is wrong, he doesn’t duck the question as politicians are taught to do. People like me tell politicians, ‘Look, don’t badmouth anybody, particularly your competition’ and he does it all the time. He defies every rule in the public relations book because he only listens to one person and that’s himself.”

Political activist and chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov says in an interview, “Trump’s childish response to Abdul-Jabbar might say something about how dangerous he would be with the power of the presidency, but we already knew that. It is getting him more media attention and that’s all he cares about.”

However, William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., says in an interview that, “…what I think people are responding to, quite frankly, is that it’s going to take a really imperious person to break through the really frustrating gridlock in Washington. I think in that sense Donald Trump is the wrong solution to the right problem.”

Mr. Seitel adds, “Trump fights back and doesn’t take it lying down when people take a swipe at you. I think that’s as American as John Wayne or any patriot.”

“Sure he doesn’t appeal right now to African-Americans, or Latinos or moderates, or poor people or middle class Democrats [or women], but the polls are unbelievable,” Seitel says. “He has 30 percent popularity over 17 candidates and that’s unheard of.”

In his op-ed, Abdul-Jabbar wrote: “It’s easy to buy into the Trump mirage because his rising poll numbers indicate he’s actually doing well. But polls are historically misleading, and his supporters will eventually desert him.”

However, if Trump wants to go the distance, “the challenge for Trump is to see how much he will moderate; How much he will apologize for some of these things; how much he will bend in order to ultimately take the brass ring," Seitel says. "It’s a real phenomenon in politics. I wouldn’t compare him to anybody. He’s a new brand in electoral politics.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Abdul-Jabbar tangles with Trump: Who's got game?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0904/Abdul-Jabbar-tangles-with-Trump-Who-s-got-game
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe