If there’s one thing we know about Charles Barkley, it’s that he’ll never shy away from saying how he really feels about something.
Maybe that’s part of the reason why he was entrusted to share a show with Gayle King on CNN cleverly (or cornily) titled King Charles, on top of all the other obligations he already has. I personally can’t wait for his coverage on March Madness to kick off soon…since he usually has no idea what’s going on because he doesn’t watch college basketball.
But it was on his CNN show that he threw out this wild quote, even though his co-host Gayle King did her best to tell him to walk it back. Just like in his NBA playing days, “Chuck” instead decided to rebound her comment and put it back up even stronger the second time.
King and Charles (see where the name came from now?) were discussing a recent sound bite that was delivered by former President Donald Trump on their show when Barkley got a upset. The clip they played showed Trump saying that his mug shot was “embraced by the black population,” and that he had seen “black people walking around with his mug shot on shirts.”
After the video stopped, King asked Charles what he thought when he saw that, and following a monumental sigh, he responded by saying this:
“First of all, I’m just gonna say this. If I see a black person walking around with Trump’s mugshot (on their shirt), I’m gonna punch them in the face.”
Gayle immediately told Barkley that he couldn’t say that, and he didn’t mean that, and it just got “Chuck” fired up that much more:
“Oh I mean that sincerely. If I was at that conference, I would have gotten up and walked out. That was an insult to all black people.”
You can view the rest of Barkley’s commentary on the subject in the clip below:
