The sight of President Donald Trump’s supporters invading the U.S. Capitol has generated horror and outrage across the sports world, but it has struck especially for a West Point graduate watching from home.
Mike Krzyzewski, speaking to the media for the first time since an exposure to COVID-19 earlier this month, delivered a long speech when asked about the Capitol riot on Saturday.
The duke’s coach asked that all people involved in the riot be prosecuted and that politicians who defend the incident be punished. Alternating between saddened, perplexed and indignant, he discussed Wednesday’s events, the COVID-19 pandemic and the current political situation.
The beginning of Krzyzewski’s reply:
The saddest day – I am 73 – outside 9/11, shootings in schools where children were shot and killed. And by the way, I know that everyone went under the tables and that at the Capitol. I would like to ask how many times did teachers have to do this at school when there is armed violence?
Wednesday was a horrible day. It was an insurrection. It was for the very structure of this great country; the symbol for our democracy is that Capitol, and we allowed that symbol to be really just spat out and stepped on. It was a sad day.
My prayers go out to the family of the police officer who was 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 me? There are 16,000. And that whole thing, like, what the hell are we doing? What the hell are we doing? Where we cannot work as a country to come together and distribute these vaccines, make sure that we are working together. And if someone is doing something bad, Congress has a responsibility to move forward.
Krzyzewski has been one of the most outspoken coaches of college basketball when it comes to playing during a pandemic, a topic where several of his colleagues disagree with him.
Krzyzewski, who came to the rank of army captain, is not the only ex-military in the sport to publicly denounce the turmoil, as San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, an Air Force veteran, went even further in attacking Trump’s character and speculating that the president enjoyed watching the scene.
A former supporter of the Republican party, Krzyzewski has been somewhat critical of Trump in the past. On Saturday, he asked the country to put aside partisanship:
Everyone who was involved should be prosecuted. And our leaders, our politicians who spoke in support of this, must be punished. There is no doubt about it. It is not about being a Republican or Democrat, but about being a bloody American.
People say that we are not who we are, but now. It is who we are. We need to change who we are. We need to go back to the basic principles that founded this country. So again, I’m sorry for going up to the podium, but being at home and watching this, my experience at West Point and being in the Army and all that, I’m used to being on a team. Our country needs to be a team again.
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