Don King Has Lunch with the Financial Times

There probably aren't many Obama supporters with positive things to say about President Bush, but Don King is one of them. From Harry Haman's interview with King in yesterday's Financial Times ("Lunch with the FT: Don King"):

King has been a prominent supporter of George W Bush and has been a regular guest at Bush’s ranch in Texas. “Every black looked at me like I had bubonic plague,” he says, although he is unrepentant, calling Bush “a revolutionary president”. I ask him to explain. “George Walker Bush had the most diverse cabinet of any president in the history of this nation: he had the Latinos, he had the blacks, all those who had been degraded, dehumanised and cast into a ... package of negative associations. He took those [people with] negative associations and he put them to the forefront of the nation.”

King believes Bush prepared the way for an Obama presidency, and compares his willingness to put African-Americans in charge of national security to a defining moment in baseball history, the 1947 decision of Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey to sign the black player Jackie Robinson, thus integrating the sport.