Baseball Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera on Wednesday defended his support for President Trump despite a recent scathing op-ed that accused him of holding a “far-right” ideology.
Mr. Rivera, a former Yankees star closer and Panamanian immigrant, responded to the Daily Beast op-ed during an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” saying he won’t be intimidated into backing down from his support of Mr. Trump.
“Trump, to me, he was a friend of mine before he became the president,” Mr. Rivera said. “So, because he’s president I will turn my back on him? No.
“I respect him,” he added. “I respect what he does, and I believe that he’s doing the best for the United States of America.”
Mr. Rivera was responding to The Daily Beast’s July 21 opinion piece titled, “Inside Baseball Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera’s Far-Right Politics,” which was published on the same day Mr. Rivera was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The piece claimed that “over the past three years,” Mr. Rivera has “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,” journalist Robert Silverman wrote. “It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists.”
Mr. Rivera said Wednesday that his position is unchanged since reading Mr. Silverman’s piece.
“You have the power to say whatever you want to say,” he said.
“That won’t change my position,” he added. “That won’t change my belief.”
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