“Hey, that’s my man. That’s who he is,” said Don King, the boxing promoter, discussing what he called Mr. Trump’s “outlandish” remarks. “To me, Donald is Donald. That’s not a presidential endorsement, but it is a humanistic endorsement,” he said.
Mr. Tyson, who is Muslim, recently defended Mr. Trump, telling the website TMZ, “Hey listen, anybody that was ever president of the United States offended some group of people.”
While Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has become more incendiary since his campaign began, his worldview was already on display over the years in his interactions with African-American friends, who have at times been forgiving of remarks that struck other audiences as insensitive.
“He’d say ‘the blacks,’ ‘the Jews,’ that stuff,’ ” Mr. Simmons recalled. “But it’s the same way people speak bluntly — like, very ’hood. It’s semantics.”
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