NBA legend Charles Barkley let his feelings about CNN fly during an interview with Michael Smerconish.
Barkley has never been one to shy away from controversy, and he wasn’t about to start on Monday while speaking to Smerconish on SiriusXM. The sports star mentioned his hatred for CNN to the network’s host as he was explaining why he believes everyone should be an Independent.
Watch:
“Can you please say half the things now that you said during the commercial break and then we can just call it a day?” the host asked.
“Hey, man. I’m so fed up with the entire political system. Well, you have to be a Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal. Now you got to be a socialist. I mean, it’s silliness out here. I’m an independent person. I got my own brain. When I hear the word ‘conservative,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘socialist,’ I’m like, ‘Okay, that guy’s out. That girl’s out,’” Barkley responded.
“You heard the callers at the tail end of the last hour. Like that’s not the way we function here. You know that this program exists to spread the independent gospel,” Smerconish chimed in.
“Yeah, but the problem is people are brainwashed,” Barkley explained. “They’re like, ‘I’m I’mma be a Democrat. I’m gonna be a Republican.’ Right. All you have to do is sway 3-5% of the people with something they [are] passionate about or anti-, against, and that’s how you win elections. Like, I’m not- I don’t agree with everything Democrats or Republicans do. Why would I just say I’m a Democrat? Everybody should be an independent. I mean that makes zero sense.”
“One of the reasons I hate CNN now, and I work for CNN-” he continued.
“As uh, as do I,” Smerconish cleared his throat.
“Yeah. But I try to support — be a good man. But I’m sitting there watching the night shows, and I’m like — they have two Republicans on, two Democrats. They scream at each other for an hour, and I’m like, ‘That’s just an hour of my life I can’t get back.’ Because the Republican on stage, everything the Democrats do is wrong. The Democrats say, ‘Everything the Republicans do is wrong.’ And what’s bad about it is, they’re like all successful people,” Barkley pointed out.”Like I want to help poor people, because I tell people this thing ain’t got nothing to do – see, they make you pick a team based on race, education; man, this is just rich people against poor people.”
“The rich people, they’re smarter,” he continued. “They’re like, ‘Let’s just make the poor people fight with each other.’ And the poor people, they’ll be like, ‘You know, we’re actually in the same boat. We want economic opportunity. We live in poor neighborhoods. Our kids go to crap schools. We can’t afford to go to the big schools.’ But they’re like, ‘No, let’s make them fight with each other.’”
