NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace slammed President Donald Trump on Tuesday night for calling an incident in which a noose was found in his garage a “hoax,” saying that the POTUS was “wrong on the factual information.”
As Yahoo Entertainment reported, Wallace appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live , along with comedian Anthony Anderson, to address the noose incident and the tweet the president posted on Monday. After a rope tied into the shape of a noose was found in Wallace’s garage, suspicions arose that Wallace — who is Black and who had called for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its events — was the victim of a hate crime. At the next race, his colleagues walked with him to the starting line in an act of solidarity. An FBI investigation later determined that the noose had been there for months and that there was no hate crime.
On Monday, as reported at the time by The Inquisitr , Trump suggested that Wallace owed NASCAR and his fellow drivers an apology.
Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2020
The driver said that when he first saw the tweet, he was taken aback because there were more important things going on that deserved the president’s attention in his opinion.
He also criticized Trump for purportedly getting some of the facts wrong.
“It’s hard to get people to understand, especially when the facts are delivered on the table, and they’ve been there for two weeks now. To be late to the party is one thing, and to be wrong on the factual information is another,” Wallace said.
First, he said, he was not the one who discovered the noose, nor was he the one who reported it to NASCAR. That was a crew member, Wallace said, who didn’t even tell him about it at first because the crew member wanted him to have a clear head for the upcoming race.
Wallace also noted that when he learned about the noose, the first person he thought of was his Black crew member.
“I texted him right away,” he said, only to find out that it was the very same crew member who had found the noose.
As for the show of support when his fellow drivers walked with him to the starting line, Wallace called it a “powerful moment.”
“I thought that was pretty powerful to show the world that our sport can come together, the sport of NASCAR, where a lot of people have their doubts about, that we show this type of unity and love and understanding,” he said.