Stephen Curry says Americans should treat President Trump — and his potential 2024 White House bid — as a serious “threat.”
“Take Trump seriously? Of course,” the Golden State Warriors star and NBA Finals MVP told Rolling Stone magazine for a cover story published Monday for its October issue.
“Most of his rhetoric — before he was president, during his last four years, and even now, if he tries to run again — has a tone of divisiveness that doesn’t have a place in our country,” he said.
“As serious and as loud as the threat is of him or whoever else is running for office,” Curry, 34, continued, “there’s a similar urgency and a loudness that’s necessary on the other side.”
It’s not the first time that Curry has spoken out against the 45th president. After Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank called the then-commander in chief an “asset” to the country in a 2017 interview, Curry told the San Jose Mercury News, “I agree with that description, if you remove the ‘et’ from asset.”
That same year, Curry said he didn’t want his team to make a traditional stop at the White House to celebrate their NBA championship title. Following Curry’s remarks, Trump tweeted that the White House invitation had been “withdrawn.”
Curry, a board member of When We All Vote, Michelle Obama’s voter registration and engagement organization, opened up about his activism to Rolling Stone.
“You’re growing and evolving on the same page as these national, politicized conversations, but it doesn’t have to be sides,” he said.
“What I try to do is be real, but also activate conversation that is sometimes uncomfortable,” the NBA All-Star said.
“The current events of the Trump era, I don’t wake up and say, ‘I wanna go at that conversation,’” Curry told the magazine.
“Some of this stuff falls on your doorstep and people want a perspective or comment, and sometimes you cough that up unsolicited.”
Curry said that while he didn’t regret not speaking out more in 2016 when the NBA weighed moving its All-Star game from North Carolina in protest of a controversial law requiring that transgender people use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex, he could’ve “been a lot stronger” on the issue.
“We get attacked as athletes sometimes when you don’t want to say something — ‘I need to get more educated,’ there’s all these lines that people use,” Curry said.
“It kind of seems like you’re soft or like you’re equivocating or avoiding whatever the situation is.”
Curry also revealed that former President Obama — a frequent golfing partner and well-known basketball fanatic — once scolded him for repeating on a 2018 podcast a conspiracy theory that questioned whether astronauts really landed on the moon.
Following the podcast interview, Curry recalled, “I got an email. It was a pretty stern, direct one from President Obama.”
After telling him that humans did step foot on the moon, Curry said Obama instructed him, “You’ve got to do something about this.”
Following Obama’s advice, Curry hosted an Instagram Live discussion with an astronaut for his more than 45 million followers, and auctioned off a pair of custom-made space-themed sneakers, with proceeds going to STEM education programs.
Curry said back in June, after clenching his fourth NBA championship and telling the cameras, “What are they gonna say now?” he received a congratulatory call from Obama.
The ex-president suggested tweaking the boast slightly, telling Curry, “What the f— are they gonna say now?”