Auburn basketball star Charles Barkley attends statue unveiling before Alabama-Auburn game, Saturday, Nov. 25: Facebook
By Glynn Wilson –
Auburn and NBA basketball star Charles Barkley was interviewed by a reporter for NBC before the Alabama-Auburn game on Saturday and asked to weigh in on the contentious campaign for U.S. Senate between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones.
Barkley, who does not live and vote in Alabama, said he supports Jones and Moore should have been disqualified to run even before the sensational allegations came out that he had engaged in sexual misconduct with underage girls.
“If I lived here, I’d vote for Doug Jones,” Barkley said. “You can’t have a guy running for office who’s a white separatist. It’s that simple.”
Watch the video on Twitter here
In Auburn for the unveiling of a statue of him outside Auburn’s basketball arena on the day of the Alabama-Auburn game, NBC’s Vaughan Hillyard caught up with Barkley and asked his thoughts on the campaign. In years past, Barkley had threatened to run for governor, and came home to support Barrack Obama in his first run for president in 2008.
“Everybody’s going crazy over these sexual allegations,” Barkley says. “Roy Moore, to me, when he brought in Steve Bannon (of Breitbart News), should have been disqualified. I don’t understand how you can have a guy who’s running with a white separatist running for a political office.”
Mr. Fake News himself, Steve Bannon (right) with discredited judge Roy Moore and his wife Kayla, who he has admitted he fell in love with at the age of 15: Facebook
Barkley said his endorsement of Jones, not Moore, was not a matter of political partisanship.
“It has nothing to do about being a Republican or Democrat,” he said. “It’s about doing the right thing. You can’t have a guy running for office who’s a white separatist. It’s that simple.”
When probed further, he said there are “a lot of black people in this state who are amazing people,” so “to run a campaign with a guy as your chief advocate who is a white nationalist or white separatist, that should have disqualified Roy Moore way before this women stuff came up.”
U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones tailgating and meeting voters on the biggest Saturday in Alabama: Facebook
I am so glad Barkley has evolved, when we lived in AZ, because he was an AL guy, we closely followed his basketball career. Although he denies it now, more than once he stated he would retire then move back to AL and run for gov as a Republican. His mom, via the media, chastised him reminding him of his roots and flat out stated “The Republican party is for the rich”…to which he sadly replied, “But mom, I am rich…” After being soundly rejected by the GOP, Sir Charles now proclaims he is a “Libertarian.” His wanna be GOP fate was sealed when he did a sports radio talk show in Auburn, some years back, in which he supported additional gun laws and the removal of the Confederate flag from all Southern states. The outrage was instant and severe-too bad he ran away, he could have been a positive political force here.