Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Don King Drops ‘N-Word’ and Waves Israeli Flag at Donald Trump Rally

(JTA) — Boxing promoter Don King’s speech at a campaign event for Donald Trump caused a stir, with most of the attention understandably focused on the fact that the boxing promoter used the N-word.

We also found ourselves wondering why, as he spoke, a rolled-up Israeli flag sat prominently on the lectern.

During Wednesday’s speech in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, King, who is African American, was reminiscing about the late pop star Michael Jackson when he seemed to have a slip of the tongue and uttered the N-word.  The New York Times King’s speech “bizarre” and said the promoter — who was convicted of second-degree manslaughter in 1966 and was twice tried and acquitted on insurance fraud charges — was a “remarkable choice” to represent Trump.

At the end of the speech, King picked up and waved several flags, including Israeli and American ones and a banner with Trump’s face.

It is not entirely clear why King decided to bring along the Israeli flag, but research reveals the boxing promoter is both a fan of the Jewish state — and flags in general.

“I love Israel and I love the Jewish people,” King told the Jerusalem Post in 2008, adding that African Americans “should try to emulate and imitate the saga of the Jewish struggle.”

Photos also show King gleefully waving flags at a variety of events, for no apparent reason. A King impersonator even seems to have caught on.

So while many were understandably shocked at King’s use of an offensive racial epithet, the fact that he brought an Israeli flag barely raised any eyebrows — or in other words  — red flags.

Watch King’s speech here:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.