After meeting with President-elect Donald Trump last week, former Super Bowl champion Ray Lewis has defended the meeting, saying he thinks the black community should keep its options open, and that Trump provides some helpful alternatives. 

Lewis' comments came while speaking with sportscaster Glen Cowherd on ESPN:

After 10 minutes, their cabinet…agreed that we had the vehicle. And you hear all these reports, ‘They turned their backs on the black community’, it’s the most embarrassing thing. I always tell people, there is no ‘they’…they is you, they is me. There is nobody gonna get it done, and so when you hear people talk about, ‘I will never go in the White House and I will never meet Trump.’ Well guess what, maybe you don’t feel the same way about your kids the way I feel about my kids. Cause I want my kids to be damn safer.

Lewis also called Trump a pure businessman, a good listener, and action-oriented.

Ray Lewis has largely avoided political correctness in the area of race relations. He posted a viral video on his Facebook page back in April criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement for focusing on supposed police brutality while not addressing black-on-black crime.