Former basketball coach and famous bully Bobby Knight visited Fox News a few hours before the first presidential debate and gave a big thumbs up to Donald Trump and the terrific temperament Knight predicted he’d put on display.
“There are a lot of folks who are saying that the temperament and his temper, period, is going to get the best of him tonight,” host Neil Cavuto said to Knight.
“I don’t think that’ll even come close to happening,” Knight said. “I think that Donald Trump will show people just what an intelligent guy he is and just how he can deal with any kind of circumstance that he is involved with, and that’s why I’ve been so interested in Mr. Trump.”
The only thing funnier than Knight vouching for Trump’s temperament is Fox asking him to do so. Sports writer Dave Zirin wrote about Knight when he endorsed Trump:
Just as Donald Trump is literally giving nightmares to the immigrant children who go to my son’s elementary school, Knight made his players afraid not because he was bigger or stronger but because he had power. That meant he could choke or punch them or shove used toilet paper in their faces, in full knowledge that they’d never be able to give it back.
[…]
According to former NBA coach Butch Carter, who played at Indiana, Knight once screamed at a black player that he would end up like “all the rest of the n——— in Chicago, including your brothers.” Carter calls Knight a “self-serving coward.”
But Knight told Cavuto that Trump “brings more to this table than anybody conceivably could bring to this table.” Sure, Knight acknowledged, Trump has had “problems.” But so do General Motors, Ford and Westinghouse, Knight said. “I think Donald Trump is a really, really bright guy dealing with problems,” Knight added.
Knight predicted that people everywhere would be impressed with Trump and his temperament after the debate. “I think that when this is concluded tonight, there are gonna be people all over the country that simply say to themselves, ‘Hey, this guy’s pretty smart and I don’t see anything really wrong with this guy,’” Knight envisioned.
Of course, the debate did not work out that way at all.
Watch Knight's faulty predictions below, from the September 26, 2016 Your World.