‘I am p***ed off as hell’: Tennis star Martina Navratilova slams ‘capitulation’ to Trump in new ad campaign
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Tennis star Martina Navratilova fled an authoritarian nightmare in her native Czechoslovakia as an 18-year-old in 1975 by asking for political asylum in the United States.
A half-century later, she is accusing Donald Trump of bringing about the same nightmare in her adopted home and slamming those who are going along with the president.
In a new ad released by the anti-Trump group Home of the Brave, Navratilova says she won’t be keeping her mouth shut about the Trump administration’s authoritarian bent.
“I defected from a totalitarian regime, and like hell am I going to be cowed again, and have to be careful about what I say,” she said. “I grew up in a Communist country … so I know what it looks like and feels like to live in a totalitarian regime where you cannot speak your mind or worse yet put in prison for political opinions.”
The retired tennis star, who remains one of the sport’s most successful athletes and one of just three players in history to have won a “career grand slam” in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, said she remains “proud” to be an American citizen but is nonetheless “embarrassed for what Trump is doing to our country.”
Martina Navratilova fled an authoritarian regime in her native Czechoslovakia when she was 18 (AP)
She added that she is “p***ed off as hell” about people “capitulating” to Trump since he returned to the White House and noted that the U.S. was “the freest country in the world” when she defected as a teenager.
But at the same time, she warned that the current iteration of the U.S. government has left the country less free than it was when she first arrived.
“If this was the situation for me now, I would definitely not choose to live here … when you leave a totalitarian regime and you come to a freedom-loving country, of course, you have to speak up,” she said.
She exhorted Americans not to hold their tongues in the face of Trump’s anti-democratic moves.
“Speaking out is the patriotic thing to do. When you see something wrong, don’t be afraid,” she said.
