Los Angeles Lakers small forward LeBron James, who is no fan of former President Donald Trump, is now a part-owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Several news reports on Tuesday this week noted that James will join Fenway Sports Group as a partner. He will have some sort of an ownership stake in the company’s subsidiaries including the Boston Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club, Roush Fenway Racing, and NESN. The 36-year-old already owned 2 percent of Liverpool FC, a Premier League soccer team in the United Kingdom.
Maverick Carter, a friend and business partner of James, will also join FSG as a partner.
“I think for me and for my partner, Maverick, to be the first two Black men to be a part of that ownership group in the history of that franchise, I think it’s pretty damn cool,” James said following the Lakers game on Tuesday night, according to ESPN. “It gives me and people that look like me hope and inspiration that they can be in a position like that as well, that it can be done. It gives my kids at my I Promise School more and more inspiration as well.”
In bringing James into the fold, FSG added someone who has made many anti-Trump statements over the years.
James, who campaigned with former first lady Hillary Clinton in Ohio in her failed 2016 presidential bid and gave a speech at one of her rallies, has not been shy about sharing his thoughts about the former president.
In August 2017 following the United the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in the death of one woman protesting against the alt-right, James bashed Trump.
“Hate has always existed in America,” he tweeted. “Yes we know that but Donald Trump just made it fashionable again! Statues has nothing to do with us now!”
James used strong words to describe his feelings about Trump six months later.
When speaking about Trump, he said that, “The No. 1 job in America, the appointed person, is someone who doesn’t understand the people and really don’t give a f— about the people.”
And since Trump wants pro athletes to stand for the national anthem and has criticized those who kneel, James ripped Trump in a July 2018 interview with CNN’s Don Lemon.
“What I’ve noticed over the past few months [is] he’s kinda used sports to kinda divide us, and that’s something that I can’t relate to,” James said.
And when Trump said in an August 2020 interview on Fox News that he didn’t plan on watching the NBA anytime soon, James hit back.
“The game will go on without his eyes on it,” he said, according to Sporting News. “I can sit here and speak for all of us that love the game of basketball: We could care less.”
James also celebrated Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden on Twitter. In response to a gif someone tweeted of Trump saying “you’re fired,” his catchphrase on The Apprentice, James tweeted a few hands waving bye to him.
James won’t be the only liberal Red Sox owner. The team’s majority owner John Henry also owns The Boston Globe, a left-leaning publication with a left-wing editorial board. Henry and another part-owner Tom Werner endorsed John Kerry for president in 2004.
