Charles Barkley laughed at Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Wednesday after she claimed that America has “never been a racist country.”
The NBA icon, on the latest episode of his CNN show “King Charles” with Gayle King, chuckled at a clip of the former United Nations ambassador making her claim during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday.
“We asked people out on the street about that tonight. We didn’t find anyone that could agree with that statement,” King said of Haley’s comments.
“Not anybody with common sense,” Barkley said.
He added that he’s having a “hard time” trying to decide who to vote for, and said the former South Carolina governor is the “leader in the clubhouse.”
“Because she’s 100% correct,” he said. “If you forget about slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, antisemitism, Asian hate that’s been going on in this country ― America has been smooth sailing.”
When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Haley if she “really” thinks America has never been a racist country “as a historical matter,” she said she herself dealt with “plenty of racism” as the daughter of Indian immigrants, but that her parents never told her they lived in a “racist country.”
“And I’m so thankful they didn’t, because for every brown and Black child out there, if you tell them they live ― or [are] born ― in a racist country, you’re immediately telling them they don’t have a chance,” Haley told Tapper at a CNN town hall on Thursday.
Barkley said you can’t be surprised by Haley’s comments, which he called “just stupid.”
“America was built on racism,” he said. “You can criticize a country. This is the greatest country in the world, but you can still criticize it. Anybody who thinks we don’t have racism ― you turn on the TV, every single day there’s racism.”