LeBron James makes fun of Kyle Rittenhouse crying on witness stand — and outspoken NBA superstar gets shredded for it on Twitter



Socially conscious NBA superstar LeBron James weighed in on the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial Wednesday by mocking the 18-year-old defendant for becoming emotional and beginning to cry on the witness stand.

James — reacting to a USA Today headline saying Rittenhouse "broke down in tears" — told his 50 million Twitter followers that he wasn't buying it, among other things.

"What tears?????" James asked in his now viral tweet. "I didn't see one. Man knock it off! That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court." He finished off his message with a trio of laughing-crying emojis.

What tears????? I didn\u2019t see one. Man knock it off! That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court. https://twitter.com/usatoday/status/1458521089152274442\u00a0\u2026

— LeBron James (@KingJames) 1636596954

As of Thursday morning, James' tweet garnered nearly 170,000 likes, nearly 29,000 retweets, and over 23,000 comments.

Oops

Of course, not all of the comments were favorable. In fact, James — who's unwisely opined on a number of issues beyond the basketball court — got his head handed to him by a several prominent Twitter users:

Lebron, great defender of the Chinese government's tyranny, also happens to be an unparalleled dumpster fire in the field of criminal justicepic.twitter.com/Hs9JeXnBt9

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) 1636635152

You're a genuinely terrible and unintelligent person.https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1458619464329670657\u00a0\u2026

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) 1636601447

Did your ChiCom masters tell you to tweet this?

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) 1636631091

To know you is to dislike you. How could an individual be wrong on every conceivable issue? What an execrable schmuck you are, respectfully of course.

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) 1636605781

LeBron James appears to be mocking people dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in this post. Why? Is this a joke to you? Not a good look!

— Aaron J. Carpenter\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@aaronjcarpenter) 1636605250

You would know all about faking.

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) 1636602595

glad you could take a break from promoting slavery in China that benefits you to mock a kid who defended himself legally.

— Jessica O\u2019Donnell (@heckyessica) 1636603857

The coward who\u2019s fought for nothing has comments about a young man who stepped into the breech to defended his community because our institutions failed. \n\nLeBron\u2019s existence as a celebrity is a reflection of our decline.https://twitter.com/kingjames/status/1458619464329670657\u00a0\u2026

— Joe Kent for WA-3 (@joekent16jan19) 1636599488

Sit this one out champ.pic.twitter.com/e8tfbJJhhR

— Barrington Martin II (@_BarringtonII) 1636600062

No one knows how to fake something better than youpic.twitter.com/XHLzaTX00d

— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) 1636635858

You get rich selling shoes made by SLAVES.https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1458619464329670657\u00a0\u2026

— Larry O'Connor (@LarryOConnor) 1636599830

If he\u2019s faking it, we better call Juwan Howard.pic.twitter.com/j5ZuKTwYSo

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) 1636600458

And conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller called James a "f***ing coward" while mocking him back, asking if he plans on offering "any support for your fellow NBA player @EnesKanter speaking out against the mass extermination of ethnic Muslims in China?"

But notable blue checkmarks agreed with James

As you might guess, a number of Twitterverse luminaries saw things the way James did.

"Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, 26, and Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and injured Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27," CNN commentator Ana Navarro-Cárdenas tweeted. "Think about how much their loved ones have cried, real anguish and grief, not crocodile tears."

"F*** this brat's crocodile tears," Amanda Marcotte, a politics writer for Salon, tweeted. "Self-defense is when you are minding your own business, someone attacks you, and you have to fight back. Rittenhouse picked up a gun and went looking for trouble. He found it and, in a sane world, would go to jail for it."

And Carli Pierson — an attorney and USA Today opinion writer — also invoked the "crocodile tears" charge while writing that Rittenhouse came across as "melodramatic" and shouldn't be believed.

"Regardless of how Rittenhouse tries to twist his story — or twist his sad face into tears — his innocent kid act shouldn't fool anyone," Pierson said, adding that he "could get life in prison if convicted, and that's what he deserves."

Oh, and how can we leave out this one?

C R I S I S\nA C T O Rpic.twitter.com/F0Hnce60S8

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) 1636589734

Audubon Naturalist Society to change name since John James Audubon — born in 1785 — was a slave owner and 'white supremacist'



The Audubon Naturalist Society — a leading environmental nonprofit that's more than a century old — will change its name due to John James Audubon's racist reputation, the Washingtonian reported.

What are the details?

Audubon was an American naturalist who lived from 1785 to 1851 and is famous for his study and drawings of birds. But controversy over his past has put Audubon under a negative spotlight: The Washington Post earlier this year ran a lengthy feature on the subject, titled "The racist legacy many birds carry," which was met with a good bit of mockery:

Thank you to the heroes of @washingtonpost for highlighting the legacy of racist birds. We must decolonize those a… https://t.co/jwDSKzHppw

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) 1623802786.0

And the Audubon Naturalist Society is taking action.

No longer a 'suitable namesake for us'

"It's very exciting here at ANS. We've been working over a decade to think very carefully about the region we serve — one of the most diverse in the nation," executive director Lisa Alexander told the Washingtonian. "As we began to dig into serving all people in the DC region, we also started to get a fair amount of publicity about who Audubon was — an enslaver of black people, a published white supremacist. He just didn't seem like a suitable namesake for us."

The outlet said ANS over the last decade has focused on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility for the first time in over a century and created two annual conferences to highlight environmentalists of color: Taking Nature Black and Naturally Latinos.

The Washingtonian added that ANS is the "first major Audubon-affiliated organization to scrub the naturalist from its name." The aforementioned Washington Post article highlighted a different group — the National Audubon Society — and quoted its interim chief executive, who said she's "deeply troubled by the racist actions of John James Audubon."

While the Washingtonian said the National Audubon Society announced no plans to change its name, the outlet noted that the Audubon Naturalist Society will take a year to figure out a new moniker — and likely will simply use its ANS acronym in the interim.

'The racist legacy many birds carry': Lengthy Washington Post feature gets hilarious reaction from Tucker Carlson. And he's not alone.



So, the Washington Post published a recent story with the following headline, "The racist legacy many birds carry."

Yes, birds.

Thank you to the heroes of @washingtonpost for highlighting the legacy of racist birds. We must decolonize those a… https://t.co/jwDSKzHppw

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) 1623802786.0

In fairness, it's not so much that the Post is saying certain birds are racist, as in wearing-red-MAGA-hats racist, which, of course, would be a cardinal sin of sorts:

Washington Post Racist Birds of America... https://t.co/kNZZfHHJMn

— Ronna DeBrucki (@DebruckiRonna) 1623736034.0

No, the Post's piece focuses on a debate on whether to change as many as 150 names of birds that "honor people with connections to slavery and supremacy."

More from the story:

The Bachman's sparrow, Wallace's fruit dove and other winged creatures bear the names of men who fought for the Southern cause, stole skulls from Indian graves for pseudoscientific studies that were later debunked, and bought and sold Black people. Some of these men stoked violence and participated in it without consequence.

Even John James Audubon's name is fraught in a nation embroiled in a racial reckoning. Long the most recognized figure in North American birding for his detailed drawings of the continent's species, he was also an enslaver who mocked abolitionists working to free Black people. Some of his behavior is so shameful that the 116-year-old National Audubon Society — the country's premier bird conservation group, with 500 local chapters — hasn't ruled out changing its name. An oriole, warbler and shearwater all share it.

"I am deeply troubled by the racist actions of John James Audubon and recognize how painful that legacy is for Black, Indigenous and people of color who are part of our staff, volunteers, donors and members," interim chief executive Elizabeth Gray said in a statement in May, the Post reported. "Although we have begun to address this part of our history, we have a lot more to unpack."

The Post's story on the matter spans nearly 2,000 words, which no doubt involved a lot of effort. But the clear premise is the same as numerous other campaigns in the wake of George Floyd's death and the riots that followed over the summer of 2020: To cleanse the American landscape of any hint of past real or alleged racism, no matter how far removed from the present day.

And that involved toppling and defacing and removing statues of Founding Fathers, a push to scrub the names of not-woke-enough-figures such as — believe it or not — Abraham Lincoln from school buildings in San Francisco, and canceled sales of Dr. Seuss children's books.

Now birds must be renamed, apparently.

How are folks reacting?

Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired a very funny segment on the matter Tuesday night, which you can view at the bottom of this story.

Others did the best they could to also make fun of the growing controversy. Outspoken podcaster Adam Carolla presumably had the Post's piece in mind when he tweeted the following Wednesday:

A group of crows is called a "murder" and a group of ravens is called an "unkindness." Yet a group of owls is call… https://t.co/X3TJ3WI6hk

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) 1623855547.0

Others just couldn't help themselves, either:

  • "Soon, we will only be able to refer to all birds as they or them. The ⁦⁦@washingtonpost⁩ has too many researchers," one commenter wrote. "Parrots. There. I said it and I'm glad I said it."
  • "A bird pooped on my car the other day. I thought that it was because I parked near a telephone line, but it was white supremacy all this time," another user quipped. "I'm so tired of all this oppression."
  • "Birds are pretty racist... But not as racist as the combined hatred ducks and beavers have against the platypus," another commenter noted.
  • "That bird with the racist look in its eye," another user observed. "You can totally tell!"

Here's Carlson's reaction:

Tucker: We must dismantle all systems of bird-supremacyyoutu.be