Popovich fears for America after Trump's election: 'We are Rome'

Gregg Popovich has made his fears about the American political climate well known, and the San Antonio Spurs coach isn't feeling much better now that he's had a few days to digest the impending Donald Trump presidency.

"I'm just sick to my stomach," Popovich told reporters Friday, according to Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News. "Not basically because the Republicans won or anything, but the disgusting tenor and tone and all of the comments that have been xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic.

"I live in that country where half of the people ignored all of that to elect someone. That's the scariest part of the whole thing to me. It's got nothing to do with the environment and Obamacare, and all of the other stuff. We live in a country that ignored all of those values that we would hold our kids accountable for. They'd be grounded for years if they acted and said the things that have been said in that campaign by Donald Trump."

Popovich, who was feeling uneasy even before the American people made Trump their president-elect, is struggling to wrap his head around the fact that so many of his countrymen either ignored or were unbothered by Trump's platform and messaging and general behavior on the campaign trail.

"Everybody wants to be successful, it's our country, we don't want it to go down the drain," Popovich said. "But it does not take away the fact that he used that fear mongering, and all of the comments, from day one, the race-baiting with trying to make Barack Obama, our first black president, illegitimate. It leaves me wondering where I've been living, and with whom I'm living.

"The fact that people can just gloss that over, start talking about the transition team, and we're all going to be kumbaya now and try to make the country good without talking about any of those things. And now we see that he's already backing off of immigration and Obamacare and other things, so was it a big fake, which makes you feel it's even more disgusting and cynical that somebody would use that to get the base that fired up. To get elected.

"And what gets lost in the process are African-Americans, and Hispanics, and women, and the gay population, not to mention the eighth-grade developmental stage exhibited by him when he made fun of the handicapped person. I mean, come on. That's what a seventh-grade, eighth-grade bully does. And he was elected president of the United States. We would have scolded our kids. We would have had discussions until we were blue in the face trying to get them to understand these things. He is in charge of our country. That's disgusting."

Along with feeling frightened for his fellow citizens, Popovich fears for the future of his country, which he likened to another bygone empire that ultimately tore itself apart.

"I'm a rich white guy, and I'm sick to my stomach thinking about it," he said. "I can't imagine being a Muslim right now, or a woman, or an African-American, a Hispanic, a handicapped person. How disenfranchised they might feel. And for anyone in those groups that voted for him, it's just beyond my comprehension how they ignore all of that. My final conclusion is, my big fear is - we are Rome."