Badass ballerina Misty Copeland rebuts Under Armour CEO's praise of Trump
After Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank called President Donald Trump a "real asset to the country" on Tuesday, backlash from consumers online was as swift as it was fierce.
Then Steph Curry, Under Armour's most high-profile athlete endorser, joined the conversation by saying Wednesday that he agrees with Plank's assessment -- "if you remove the et." Curry also said he wouldn't be above walking away from his Under Armour deal if he felt he had no other moral option.
Now badass ballerina Misty Copeland, another major Under Armour partner, is holding Plank's feet to the fire as well.
Copeland, who made history in 2015 as the first black principal dancer of the American Ballet Theatre, registered her disapproval of Plank's comments in a heartfelt Instagram post Thursday.
In the photo's caption, she wrote that she's "spoken at length with Kevin privately about the matter."
It is extremely notable for two major endorsers of a big-time athletic apparel company to publicly rebut that company's CEO, who is also effectively one of their primary employers. Yet Copeland and Curry have both done just that in the span of two days.
Safe to say Plank has learned one lesson this week: In 2017, everything's political.
Topics Politics
Sam Laird is Mashable's Senior Sports Reporter. He covers the wide, weird world of sports from all angles -- as well as occasional other topics -- from Mashable's San Francisco bureau. Before joining Mashable in November 2011, his freelance work appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slam, and East Bay Express. Sam is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and basketball and burritos take up most of his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @samcmlaird.
