The Carolina Panthers’ New Owner Is No Trump Fan

A new person will be joining the exclusive ownership ranks at the upcoming NFL meetings in Atlanta: for the price of $2.2 billion, hedge fund manager David Tepper will be approved as the new owner of the Carolina Panthers.

And while there may be some Donald Trump supporters among the well-heeled group of NFL owners — such as Woody Johnson of the Jets, and Robert Kraft of the Patriots — Tepper will not be counted among them.

In fact, Tepper has been a vocal opponent of the president.

He told a first-year business student at Carnegie Mellon University:

“The economy’s really good right now, despite different things. Whether I like the person or not I’m not going to get into that — although I did call him a demented, narcissistic scumbag. And if you look up demented, narcissistic scumbag, you’ll see my name calling Trump that. Just Google those three words.”

Tepper isn’t kidding. The entire first page of Google search results for the terms “demented, narcissistic, scumbag” are all articles about Tepper bashing Trump.

The Panthers’ new owner also spoke out against Trump the day before the 2016 election on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

He was infuriated after Melania Trump called her husband “generous” at a campaign event. “During Sandy, the big Sandy benefit, the big 9/11 benefit, not one dime. Not one dime! You can’t tell me this is a charitable, generous person,” Tepper told CNBC. “Trump masquerades as an angel of light, but he is the father of lies.”

Trump has a long history of being at odds with the NFL. As the owner of the United States Football League’s short-lived New Jersey Generals, he was part of an antitrust lawsuit against the league in the late ‘80s. In 2014, he failed in an attempt to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills after being outbid by Buffalo Sabres’ owner Terry Pegula.

In 2017, Trump repeatedly chastised NFL players who protested against racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem.