Spurs coach Gregg Popovich rips Trump after ‘March for Our Lives’

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich ripped President Trump on Sunday for his absence at the nationwide “March for Our Lives” demonstrations over the weekend. 

“If you just sit for a moment and imagine those bullets going through those bodies, and what those bodies might have looked like afterwards, how can the president of the country talk about all the things he’s going to do, and then go have lunch with the [National Rifle Association] and change it?” Popovich said in a statement obtained by CBS Sports.

{mosads}”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,” he continued. 

Thousands of people took to the streets across the U.S. on Saturday to protest gun violence and to call for more gun control, while the president spent time at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. 

The White House released a statement Saturday morning applauding the protesters for “exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Washington, D.C., served as the epicenter of the demonstrations and saw numerous appearances from politicians, celebrities and survivors of various mass shootings in the U.S. 

The protests were spurred by the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., last month, which took the lives of 17 people. 

Various Republican politicians, including Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have faced intense scrutiny for their ties to the National Rifle Association and views on gun control.