John Rocker was once Major League Baseball’s most famous bigot. And now—shocker—he is Donald Trump’s latest celebrity endorser.
The former Atlanta Braves closer rose to national infamy by smearing the diverse people of New York City, and now he publicly embraces the very candidate Ted Cruz has deemed to represent “New York values.”
“I think [Trump] has really woken America up,” Rocker told The Daily Caller on Tuesday. “I’m probably as disheartened as everyone else is, as Trump supporters seem to be, with the status quo and the glad-handing politicians and the soundbite politicians always looking for the right comment to make.”
Unsurprisingly, Rocker’s screeds on many issues mirror those of Trump.
Sure, the former pitcher lambasted the very fabric of The Donald’s hometown when he notoriously told Sports Illustrated, in 1999, that New York is full of “degenerates,” including “some queer with AIDS” and “some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time.” But the core of Rocker’s rant could easily be mistaken for a 2016 Trump campaign speech: “It’s depressing...You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”
Like his new favorite Muslim-bashing politician, Rocker is well-known for bucking so-called politically correct etiquette. After he became enemy No. 1 among New York Mets fans, he’d taunt them by flashing his middle finger while on the field.
In 2012 Rocker began writing a weekly column for WorldNetDaily, the right-wing website famous for pimping the President Obama birther conspiracies that made Trump a dominant political voice that same year.
Addressing what seems like a flip-flop on how he views New Yorkers, Rocker said the Republican frontrunner embodies the positive values of the city’s residents who are “willing to work damn hard and get calluses on their hands and elbow grease on their elbows just to live there.”
The former pitcher also admires Trump for, like himself, never apologizing for outrageous comments.
“I wish someone, excuse the frankness here, would have the sack, would have the backbone to make unpopular comments, and when folks come out—mainly media, special interest groups, factions, things like that—and just start hammering them and demanding apologies…I’ve always wanted to see the person that’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve made these comments, these are my beliefs, and you know what, if you don’t like it, stick it. I’m not apologizing, I’m not changing,’” Rocker said in his endorsement interview.
“Donald Trump is that guy,” he added.
Upon the release of his first book, Rocker sold “Speak English” T-shirts on his website.
Sadly, the shirts are no longer available. They would undoubtedly be a smash hit at Trump campaign rallies.