San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich labeled Donald Trump a "coward" after the president opted to leave Washington, D.C. and spend the weekend at his golf club in Mar-a-Lago, while students across the country led marches against gun violence.
Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school who survived the Parkland, Florida, shooting in February, led hundreds of thousands of people in the March For Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.
Similar demonstrations took place in several cities across the country as students rallied to raise awareness about gun violence and demanded stricter firearm laws.
Speaking in an interview on Sunday, Popovich said: "[H]ow can the president of the country talk about all the things he's going to do, and then go have lunch with the NRA and change it? It's just cowardice. A real leader would have been in Washington, D.C. this weekend, not at his penthouse at Mar-a-Lago.
"He would have had the decency to meet with a group, to see what's going on, and how important it is, and how important our children should be to us. So for all those politicians involved, it's just a dereliction of duty. The fact that our president left town, is a real indication of how much he really cares about anything other than feeding his insatiable ego."
“There's not one event that is going to signal what it's going to be like in the future,” said Popovich. "But I can tell you that I'm sure most everybody is going to be unbelievably proud and excited about those students and what they've done. Because our politicians have certainly sat on their thumbs and just hidden. To most, it's almost like a dereliction of duty to watch all these people get killed with guns