Liberals in the media go ballistic whenever a celebrity publicly supports President Trump. The latest target of this kind of assault is Major League Baseball star Mariano Rivera, who was unanimously inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday despite a hit piece slamming the former New York Yankees pitcher for having “far-right politics.” (Ever notice that conservatives are often described as being on the "far right" while liberals are rarely called the "far left?")
Even as Rivera was being honored in Cooperstown, New York, Daily Beast reporter Robert Silverman posted an article that hammered the sports legend, who responded during an appearance on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning that the criticism “won’t change my position, that won’t change my belief.” (For more on the Daily Beast attack, see NewsBusters.)
Co-host Steve Doocy began the interview by reading part of Silverman’s article:
He’s ... served at the pleasure of a racist President, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of a far-right government in Israel and gotten chummy with outright bigots [and] apocalyptic loons. None of this will be inscribed on his Hall of Fame plaque.
It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists. … [T]he Hall of Famer’s actions make it clear his sympathies lie with the Trump Administration.
“You had not seen that until we talked about it this morning,” Doocy noted. “What do you make of that?”
Rivera answered: “I tell you what: Mr. President Trump to me, he was a friend of mine before he became the president, okay?”
“So, I mean, because ... he's president, I will turn my back on him?” the first person voted into the Hall of Fame unanimously asked. “No. No. I respect him. I respect what he does. And I believe that he's doing the best for the United States of America.”
Doocy then inquired: “So you’re a Trump fan?”
“I'm his friend,” the athlete replied before moving on to a different topic.
“When it comes to Israel, you know, as a Christian, my Savior Jesus Christ, he's a Jew, okay? So how am I going to turn my back, and say I won't support Israel?” he noted.
Turning his attention to the person who wrote the Daily Beast article, Rivera stated: ‘You have the power to say whatever you want to say, but that won't change my position, and that won't change my belief.”
Also during the interview, the star athlete described how he began his journey of faith by noting: “You know, at age 24, my wife got sick, my boy was sick. And she got the chickenpox, and he was in her womb for six months and then the doctor told her to stay away from people with chickenpox.”
Rivera continued:
So he's supposed to be born with this vertebrae being open, so his head would have been growing, growing to the point that he would die.
But a friend of ours took us to, we were in Tampa, and they were at a women's conference, and they took her and they prayed for her, and he was healed.
