Blame has been passed around to a number of individuals in the aftermath of the attempted coup at the United States Capitol earlier this week. Donald Trump, who has done everything in his power to cast doubt on the democratic process to justify his loss in the 2020 presidential election, has obviously been atop the list, but he is hardly the only person to draw scorn in Washington, D.C.
A pair of United States Senators — Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri — stood alongside Trump in trying to derail the formality that is certifying the election results in the halls of Congress. The pair of Republicans, in a hyper-cynical move assuredly designed to position themselves as favorites of Trump’s base ahead of the 2024 election, objected to the counting of electors in states other than their own, despite the fact that these states had certified the results of their elections as fair and legal.
Plenty of folks in the NBA’s orbit called them out, and on Thursday evening, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich took the pair to task. While he did not go quite as far as ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski in excoriating Hawley — Woj famously sent Hawley an email saying “f*ck you” — he called out the “lust for power” of both men, who he referred to as “a joke” and “entitled.”
More from Gregg Popovich’s pregame address: pic.twitter.com/vEl6RJbk8c
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) January 8, 2021
Popovich has, of course, been a frequent critic of Trump and the Republican Party in recent years, oftentimes using his platform as the longest-tenured coach in the NBA to rebuke those in power who use their perch to attack and suppress the marginalized. In recent months, Popovich referred to Trump as a “deranged idiot” for his response to the Black Lives Matter protests that occurred nationwide over the summer and spoke at length about voter suppression in the United States in the lead-up to the 2020 election. While Hawley is new with regards to drawing his ire, Popovich has spoken out against Cruz in the past, and in 2018, openly supported Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s unsuccessful attempt to defeat him for his Senate seat.
