Keith Olbermann marked Election Day by calling President Trump “a whiny little Kunta Kinte” in a viral tweet.
“Yes @realDonaldTrump has always been, will always be, and on the day of his bid for re-election, still is: a whiny little Kunta Kinte,” Mr. Olbermann tweeted to his 993,000 followers.
Mr. Olbermann, who now hosts his own YouTube news show after leaving ESPN for the third time last month, was responding to Mr. Trump’s appearance on Fox News earlier Tuesday, in which the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends” defended the network’s coverage of the 2020 election after the president complained it had “changed a lot.”
It’s unclear what Mr. Olbermann meant with his tweet referencing Kunta Kinte, a character from the 1976 novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” which follows the semi-fictional story of a Gambian man who was enslaved and taken to America in the 1700s.
Mr. Olbermann did not follow up with further explanation.
His tweet racked up thousands of replies within two hours, with many critics calling the comment racist. Others suggested he was using a play on words for a vulgar term for the female anatomy.
Yes @realDonaldTrump has always been, will always be, and on the day of his bid for re-election, still is: a whiny little Kunta Kinte https://t.co/hIIrt1Ke17
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 3, 2020
Keith said this racist thing https://t.co/JLaYW0QtiL
— Nick Searcy, BELOVED INT’L FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) November 3, 2020
Keith Olbermann is a racist https://t.co/6p9mdvih3j pic.twitter.com/nqpP33VnEc
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) November 3, 2020
I am convinced that Keith Olbermann is some kind of concoction created in the RNC’s research lab to make Dems look bad, because there is no way this can be a real person https://t.co/RiSSA2h6dy pic.twitter.com/YPY970pkVu
— Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) November 3, 2020
I am so stupid that it took me eighteen full minutes to grasp the appalling “joke” he was trying to make. OTOH, at least I am demonstrably not the stupidest person on Twitter today. https://t.co/CPzI4W48Ub
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) November 3, 2020