Actor LeVar Burton, best known for playing blind engineer Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, has been receiving hate mail intended for basketball dad LaVar Ball.
Ball is currently entrenched in a feud with Donald Trump after he questioned how much the president did to free his son, who was one of three ballers arrested on suspicion of theft while in China.
That has sparked the fury of dedicated Trumpites, who haven’t let a small thing like ‘tweeting at the right person’ get in the way of their invective.
‘@levarburton You’re a has been actor with a thief for a son and Trump is the president of the United States,’ wrote Twitter user Mark Conte. ‘Get the picture?’
Star-crossed: LeVar Burton (left in 2016), best known for playing blind engineer Geordi La Forge (right) on Star Trek: The Next Generation, has received LaVar Ball’s hate mail
Balls up: Angry Trump fans have attacked Burton after Ball (seen right) refused to thank Donald Trump in a CNN interview with Chris Cuomo for getting his son out of a Chinese jail
Blind hatred: Twitter users sent abusive messages to Burton. In this one, the person seems to know that Burton is an actor, but not that he is unrelated to Ball
Burton – who also appeared in Roots and Reading Rainbow and looks nothing like Ball – retweeted Conte’s message, adding ‘One of many sleights I am having to endure these days. Thanks! @Lavarbigballer…’
He wasn’t kidding.
Lil Popsicle replied to Conte’s tweet by saying that ‘It is funny because everything in his tweet is FACTUALLY true….’
When another user pointed out that wasn’t the case, Lil Popsicle doubled down, saying that Burton was a ‘washed up actor’ with a ‘son caught stealing in China’.
Jamie Lenz asked Chris Cuomo – whose interview with Ball kicked off the spat – ‘I wonder what you did to p**s off your producers that they made you sit through that s**t-show of an interview with @levarburton…. what an arrogant a**hole!!’
A Twitter user with the title ‘Kim’ simply told Burton he was ‘VERY UNGRATEFUL!’ while retweeting a message that mentioned Ball by name.
Steven Epps opined: ‘@levarburton the fact that shoplifting is ok with you just shows how unethical you are as a person and a father. Fathers like you is why the prison system is over run.’
And William J McFadden simply told NBA World Newz: ‘Lavar burton is a clown.’
Actor Brent Spiner, who played the android Data alongside Burton on Star Trek, joined in with some gentle ribbing, telling him: ‘If you cared about our President, you’d change your name.’
Fake news: This user also recognized that Burton was an actor, unlike Ball who is best known for having three basketball-playing sons. Ball himself played college basketball and for the NFL
Great stuff: This person managed to tweet at LeVar Burton even though the message she was retweeting actually named LaVar ball
Send in the clowns: William J McFadden told NBA World Newz that ‘Lavar Burton’ is a clown. What the NBA site made of this mash-up of the two celebrities is unclear
The feud between Ball and Burton is the latest installment in an increasingly bizarre and embarrassing story that began when Ball’s son and three others were arrested in China.
LiAngelo Ball and two other UCLA basketball players were hauled in by Chinese police on suspicion of stealing Louis Vuitton sunglasses while visiting the city of Hangzhou.
They were returned to the US after a few days in prison, and in a press conference LiAngelo thanked Trump for intervening.
However, during an interview with Cuomo on Monday, his father was having none of it.
‘What did [Trump] do for my son?’ Ball asked Cuomo. ‘I don’t have to go around thanking everybody. I don’t have to go around thanking everybody.’
The pair engaged in a back-and-forth in which Cuomo attempted to eke gratitude from Ball, saying, ‘Why won’t you thank him? Your son thanked him, the other two boys did.’
‘I’m not the other two boys,’ Ball replied. ‘Did you thank the doctor for bringing you into this world? I’m not just saying thank you to everybody for nothing.’
The interview descended even further into madness when Ball asked Cuomo for 90 seconds straight to thank him for appearing on the program.
When it ended, the two men wished each other a ‘Happy Thanskgiving’, with Ball even taking the opportunity to send his Thanksgiving wishes to the president.
Ball in the family: LaVar Ball (back center) stands with basketball-playing sons LaMelo Ball (left) LiAngelo Ball (right) and Lonzo Ball (center). LiAngelo was arrested at the start of the month in China for stealing Louis Vuitton sunglasses; he has thanked Trump for being freed
On Wednesday Donald Trump engaged in this 5am Twitter rant in which he branded LaVar a ‘fool’ and ‘a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair’
Trump also directed two critical tweets at Ball on Sunday after Ball refused to acknowledge his role in returning the UCLA basketball players to the US
Predictably, Trump fired back at Ball on Twitter, writing on Sunday: ‘Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!
‘Shoplifting is a very big deal in China, as it should be (5-10 years in jail), but not to father LaVar. Should have gotten his son out during my next trip to China instead. China told them why they were released. Very ungrateful!’
And on Wednesday he tweeted: ‘It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence – IT WAS ME.
‘Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair.
‘Just think, LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you.
‘But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!’