A WNBA player came under fire for calling America “trash” ahead of Independence Day — prompting others in the sports world to warn her that she would not want to see the reality in authoritarian countries.
Washington Mystics guard Natasha Cloud, 31, made the controversial comment while responding to the decision from the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action Friday.
“Our country is trash in so many ways and instead of using our resources to make it better we continue to oppress Marginalized groups that we have targeted since the beginning of times,” Cloud tweeted.
Cloud, who is black and identifies as gay, went on to lament that the US was wasting its potential on “hateful ideologies.”
“We are a hateful disappointment,” she wrote.
“That’s the truth. We have the potential to be great.”
A handful of critics quickly fired back, including Fox News’ Johnny “Joey” Jones, who called Cloud a “quintessential Gen Z” with a “million complaints” — despite her technically being a Millennial.
“If you’re born into the middle class in this country, you live like a king pretty much anywhere else in the world, and immigrants that come to this country and are so patriotic,” Jones, a Marine veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan, told Ashley Strohmier and Carley Shimkus on a Tuesday episode of “Fox & Friends First.”
“Nothing gets me more proud of my service than to hear someone who has English as a second language brag on this country because I know they get it.”
“I’m not saying she’s never experienced something bad. She just doesn’t understand that experiencing negative people and stupid thoughts is a part of being a human being in any society.”
In a series of tweets, Cloud explained that she grew up in a “middle class white family” and her parents “worked their asses off to provide a beautiful life for my siblings and I.”
The Pennsylvania native, however, added that “there are inherent privileges that white Americans receive by being born white in this [the US],” and noted that the country’s biggest hurdle is “getting self centered, ignorant, misinformed, gullible, hateful people to step outside of themselves.”
On the subsequent hour of “Fox & Friends,” host Will Cain told Jones that he felt “sadness” about Cloud’s tweets.
“I don’t often have that emotion as my initial reaction … there are people who have very difficult circumstances in this country, but there are people with difficult circumstances in every corner of the globe,” he said.
Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy chimed in that she believed Cloud — who obtained a communications degree from St. Joseph’s University before joining the WNBA — ”has never learned much about this country.”
“She certainly doesn’t have an appreciation for the way we live compared to other people in the world and doesn’t understand why, despite all of our flaws, we have people clamoring to get into this country every single day, risking their lives to do so,” Campos-Duffy sniffed.
Former basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom was also less than receptive to Cloud’s takedown and asked how her colleague Brittney Griner felt about the US after enduring five months behind bars in Moscow.
“Calling America trash huh?” the one-time Boston Celtics center wrote Monday.
“Let me know when your season is over, I’ll buy your ticket and we can go together to counties [sic] like China, Russia, IRAN, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, & Turkey.
“People have NO idea how lucky and blessed they are to be in a country like America. I’m not saying America is perfect, but trust me, you don’t wanna see the other side.”
Cloud had actually previously noted that she was “blessed to travel the world” for her career.
“I’ve been in plenty of countries that I would have my human rights, healthcare, free/assisted schooling, don’t have to fear mass shootings or white supremacists, don’t have to be concerned about the highest maternal mortality rates,” she wrote.
“Less police murders, no mass incarceration based on race, adequate minimum wage, rights to my body as a woman, I MEAN I CAN KEEP GOING.”
