Steph Curry: Donald Trump’s Twitter Tirade Against Me Is ‘Not What Leaders Do’

Stephen Curry said he would not visit the White House on Friday, setting off a flurry of reaction in both the political and sports world after the 45th president of the United States decided to address the situation directly on Twitter on Saturday morning.

Donald Trump’s tweet about Curry, which essentially uninvited the Golden State Warriors from a ceremonial visit to the White House, set off LeBron James and many others in the sports world. Trump’s later comments about NFL players potentially protesting during the National Anthem drew further ire from players and owners in the league.

Curry spoke to reporters at the Warriors facility on Saturday and directly addressed Trump’s tweet, reiterating that his stance on visiting the White House has not changed and the team will find some other way to celebrate their title in February.

Curry said the unfortunate thing about Trump’s tweet is that the Warriors were finally going to get together and talk abotu what to do with a potential visit to the White House.

“It’s kind of crazy because today was a big opportunity for us to kind of talk about what the situation was over the summer,” Curry said. “We were going to talk about it as a team today. It’s kind of funny that that tweet was sent before we had the chance to get together as a team so. It is what it is, my stance is the same as it was yesterday and it kind of cemented it even further.”

The Warriors point guard stressed that Trump has represented the United States in a “very damaging way” that’s helped him make his decision not to visit the White House.

How things in our country have gone, especially with him representing us, for me, in a very damaging way,” he said.

Curry was asked what it was like to be mentioned by the president in a negative way, calling it “surreal” and suggesting there’s a reason Trump targets certain athletes or people and not others, though he didn’t elaborate on specifically what he meant.

“I don’t know why he feels the need to target certain individuals rather than others,” Curry said. “I have an idea of why, but it’s kind, it’s just kind of beneath the leader of a country to go that route. It’s not what leaders do.”

Curry was likely surprised by all this because it’s nothing new. Various Warriors players and coaches were critical of Trump all summer, and it seemed extremely likely that they would decline an invitation from Trump should it come. It never did, though, and when Curry’s comments popped up on Fox News’ ‘Fox and Friends’ on Saturday morning, the president responded on Twitter.

Whether Curry’s latest comments show up on Fox News is anyone’s guess, but seems likely. If so, maybe Trump will respond to Curry once more.