Donald Sterling said some pretty stupid things. He’s catching flak for it left and right. There is a small cotingent of folks who, even though they disagree with what he said, and think that his statements are deplorable, also allow that it was a private conversation with an expectation of privacy. Who hasn’t said something off base in a conversation you felt sure was never going to be revealed?
The majority of commenters think Sterling should be ridden out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered. Get him out of the NBA. Make him apologize. Keep him away from little kids. Of course, we don’t prosecute hate speech in the United States, especially not something in a private conversation. This isn’t France.
In the ongoing distraction from real world events that is the Sterling mouth drama, The Donald has now weighed in. In a bit on Fox News, Trump said that Sterling’s girlfriend, V. Stiviano, is a “girlfriend from hell.”
“It’s terrible, he got set up by a very, very bad girlfriend,” Trump told Fox hosts and viewers. “Let’s face it: That whole thing is—she’s called the girlfriend from hell.”
He acknowledged that the conversation was private, but that isn’t saving Sterling.
“She was baiting him, and she’s a terrible human being. And he gave horrible answers, and disgusting answers. You’re right, it’s a private conversation. But it became very public.”
Stiviano’s attorney says she did not release the recording.
“This office understands that the currently released audio tape of approximately 15 minutes is a portion of approximately one hour of overall audio recording of Mr. Donald T. Sterling and Ms. Stiviano, and is in fact legitimate,” Stiviano’s attorney, Mac Nehoray, said in a statement.
“Ms. Stiviano did not release the tape(s) to any news media,” he added.
An interesting additional bit of information to add to the pile is that Stiviano is half black. And the nature of the relationship between her and Sterling gets odder, considering this further snip from the tapes.
“You can sleep with (black people). You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want,” Sterling says on the recording. “The little I ask you is … not to bring them to my games.”
Image via YouTube