Once mediocre NBA player, failed CNN host and left-wing social media fabulist Rex Chapman is being blasted for a racist tirade against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that he began posting on Twitter on Thursday.
In his screed, Chapman posted a list of all the things that, in his white man’s opinion, “proves” that Thomas isn’t really a black man.
It may be hard to remember just who Rex Chapman is.
Chapman had a CNN career that fizzled in weeks, not months, when he was chosen as a mainliner for CNN’s disastrously short-lived streaming service, CNN+. Of course, CNN+ was a serious mistake for the cable news station, as it flamed out in less than a month despite the fact that the network spent $300 million to launch the online service. It failed at lightning speed, sending Chapman’s big TV career down the toilet in one of the fastest career flushes in TV history.
Oddly, despite the fact that he was never a host on CNN proper, and his CNN+ career didn’t even last as long as a bout with the flu, he is still listed as a “host” on CNN’s website.
Regardless, Chapman’s racist, white privilege-esque tirade against Thomas may be a desperate attempt to be relevant, but it does show the racism at the heart of white liberals.
In his tweets, Chapman tried his best to attack Thomas. In his first tweet, for instance, Chapman thought he had delivered a major blow by posting a video of Thomas’ visit to a Christian college graduation ceremony where he was the only black person in the room. As if that is somehow meaningful.
For some reason, Chapman next went on to claim that Thomas “wouldn’t last 20-30 seconds in an NBA locker room,” and then asked his mind-numbed followers, “Why have you never seen Clarence Thomas at an NBA game? As in — ever?”
What does “wouldn’t last 20 seconds in an NBA locker room” even mean? Is Chapman alleging that an NBA locker room is a dangerous place to be? Isn’t that a racist statement? And isn’t it even more racist to assume that you can’t be black unless you are a basketball fan?
Do you think the media excuses racist attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas?
Then Chapman next plied the “step-and-fetch-it” calumny by claiming that Thomas is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s errand boy.
Finally, this failed TV personality attacked Justice Thomas by showing a photo of the jurist with his white wife, along with another couple in an interracial marriage. I thought liberals always said “love is love”?
Political strategist Greg Price curated Chapman’s posts, just in case the former NBA player tries to send them down the Internet memory hole:
In a 12 hour span, Rex Chapman has compared Clarence Thomas to Clayton Bigsby, mocked him and Daniel Cameron for being in interracial marriages, and said he isn’t truly black because he doesn’t go to NBA games. pic.twitter.com/dFPEgg48mE
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 1, 2022
The contrast between Chapman and Justice Thomas is stark, of course. Despite having a hard upbringing during the days of Jim Crow, Thomas completed law school and rose to a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court, where his opinions are lauded as some of the most literate rulings grounded in historical analysis in the court’s history.
Meanwhile, despite showing promise in college ahead of his NBA career, Chapman never became much of a player in the pros, earned very few accolades or awards and admitted in 2021 that he became a drug addict, by abusing Oxycontin as his basketball career wound down.
By 2014, after his NBA career was a dim memory for everyone, he ended up convicted of shoplifting from an Arizona Apple store, as the Bleacher Report noted at the time.
One “success” he has had in his post-NBA life, though, is to have become a favorite leftist bomb-thrower on Twitter. And in this second act, he has racked up an impressive number of viral tweets that later turned out to be lies. Chapman has become an expert at pushing lies, doctored videos, deceptively edited quotes and misinformation on Twitter.
For instance, last year he tweeted that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell refused to wear a mask early during the pandemic.
This dude didn’t wear a mask publicly for MONTHS AND MONTHS while the former guy was in office. He went right along with whatever the former guy said and did with regard to COVID. He knew all of this shit then. So why now?
This man is a misinformation scourge…@LeaderMcConnell https://t.co/jUQdUPkCe2
— Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman) July 21, 2021
The facts, though, prove that McConnell was one of the first U.S. senators to advocate for masks in 2020.
His lies about McConnell are far from the only misinformation he has pushed on Twitter. In January of 2021, Chapman posted a faked video that he presented as real video of a U.S. military band playing “Hit the Road Jack” on the day Donald Trump left office.
Perfect. Trump’s last day.
The Military Band right outside the White House — “Hit The Road Jack”… pic.twitter.com/B0kXDgqggB
— Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman) January 19, 2021
It turned out that the video Chapman posted was fake and the real video proved that the band was not playing “Hit the Road Jack” at all.
In yet another tweet in which he promulgated a hoax, in 2020, Chapman posted a photo that he claimed showed U.S. mailboxes in California padlocked so that people could not mail their mail-in ballots.
His claim was quickly and widely debunked:
Rex Chapman doubles down on dopey ‘locked mailboxes in Burbank’ conspiracy theory despite video evidence proving he’s wrong https://t.co/75XVjlv0x7
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 17, 2020
By September, Chapman became righteously indignant that Virginia Tech dared continue playing football in a packed stadium despite his proclamation that sporting events were “super spreaders” of COVID. But Internet sleuths soon found photos of Chapman sitting unmasked in a crowded stadium himself.
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) September 4, 2021
He also pushed the false claim that the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor had battered down the door at “the wrong house.” This claim is false. The police had a warrant for the very house Taylor was in when they came knocking.
Finally, in December of last year, Chapman posted a tweet in which he advocated for hospitals to refuse to treat anyone who is unvaccinated for the coronavirus.
Who could possibly object?
— Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman) December 22, 2021
There are many more just like those above, but you get the picture.
After all those lies, it probably isn’t surprising that CNN thought he would be a good hire for their extremist, left-wing “news” channel.