Popovich: President Trump is a 'soulless coward'

San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich hasn't minced words in the past over his opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump, and won't be starting now.

Pertaining to an ambush in Niger on Oct. 4 which killed four U.S. soldiers, Trump said the following as to why he hadn't issued a public statement on the matter, as transcribed by The Nation's Dave Zirin: "President (Barack) Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls, a lot of them didn't make calls. I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I'm able to do it."

Popovich - a military man who served five years in the United States Air Force - reached out to Zirin so he could vent his frustrations over Trump's comments, insisting that whatever he said be on the record:

I've been amazed and disappointed by so much of what this President had said, and his approach to running this country, which seems to be one of just a never-ending divisiveness. But his comments today about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presidents Obama and Bush never contacted their families, is so beyond the pale, I almost don't have the words.

This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner - and to lie about how previous Presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers - is as low as it gets. We have a pathological liar in the White House: unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this President should be ashamed because they know it better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.

When it was announced that Trump had won the presidency back in November, Popovich mentioned that he was "sick to his stomach" because of the "xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic" things Trump had uttered prior to being elected.

Popovich has also called America "an embarrassment" to the rest of the world, if only because of Trump's residence in the Oval Office. He's even questioned how Trump voters could possibly continue to support a man who continuously crosses moral and ethical boundaries.