Donald Trump was among the talent gathered at the Friars Club Friday to roast the world’s most famous boxing promoter, Don King.
"I have a catch phrase: `You're fired,'" Trump said. "Don King has a catch phrase: `Not Guilty.'"
The Trump uppercut was the tip of the iceberg, as 12 friends and comics, including Colin Quinn, Al Sharpton, Joe Frazier and Pat O’Brien honored Friars Club tradition and hit King with a good number of low blows, including a few choice racial epithets.
But it was King’s hair that occupied most of the comedy material, followed closely by jabs at the businessman’s criminal past and rumored shady business practices.
In 1954, King shot a man who was trying to rob one of his gambling houses and it was ruled a justifiable homicide. In 1966, he was convicted of killing an employee who owed him money, but his sentence was reduced to non-negligent manslaughter.
Comedian Colin Quinn said that having grown up in Cleveland, Ohio, King's subsequent prison term was "upward mobility." He added that the hair of King, Trump and Rev. Sharpton, "look like the three stages of a forest fire."
Sharpton said of both King and his chief roaster Trump: "We have two slicksters up here today. One they call a mogul, the other they call a mugger. That's race in America."
When it was King’s turn to take the podium, the 72-year-old lapsed into his trademark flurry of adjectives, including claims that he was "the father of hip-hop" and that "George Walker Bush is a revolutionary."
