The sight of supporters of President Donald Trump storming the American Capitol unleashed horror and outrage across the sports world, but it hit hard especially for a West Point graduate who watched from home.
Mike Krzyzewski, who spoke to the media for the first time since being exposed to COVID-19 earlier this month, began an extensive tirade when asked about the riot at the Capitol on Saturday.
The Duke coach demanded that all people involved in the riot be prosecuted and that the politicians defending the incident be punished. Alternating between sad, surprised and furious, he discusses Wednesday’s events, the COVID-19 pandemic and the current political situation.
The beginning of Krzyzewski’s answer:
The saddest day – I’m 73 years old – outside 9/11, shooting at schools where children were shot dead. And by the way, I know everyone walked under the desks and that at the Capitol. I would like to ask how many times did teachers have to do this in school when there is violence?
Wednesday was a horrible day. It was an uprising. It went to the fabric of this great land; the symbol for our democracy is that of the Capitol, and we have allowed that symbol to actually just be spit on and trampled on. It was a sad day.
My prayers go out to the officer family killed by the Capitol police, just as my prayers go out to the 16,000 families who lost loved ones in the past week. Are you kidding? There are 16,000. And that whole thing, like, what the hell, are we doing? What the hell are we doing? Where we as a country cannot work together to extract these vaccines, make sure we get together. And if someone does something bad, Congress is responsible for stepping forward.
Krzyzewski was one of the more outspoken coaches in university basketball when it comes to playing a pandemic, a topic where several of his peers disagree with him.
Krzyzewski, who has risen to the captaincy of the military, is not the only former member of the military in sports to expose the riot in public, as San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, a veteran of the air force, even went further by Trump character and speculates that the president enjoys watching the scene.
A former Republican supporter, Krzyzewski, has been somewhat critical of Trump in the past. On Saturday, he called on the country to move beyond bias:
All who were involved, they should be prosecuted. And our leaders, our politicians who have expressed their support for it, need to be punished. There is no doubt about it. It’s not about being a Republican or a Democrat, it’s about a damn American.
People say it’s not who we are, it’s who we are now. This is who we are. We need to change who we are. We must return to the basic principles that established this country. So I’m sorry I climbed on a pulpit, but that I was home and watching it, my West Point background and that I was in the military and all that, I’m used to being in a team . Our country needs to be a team again.
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