NEW YORK– Charles Barkley isn’t running for president, but maybe he should think about it.

The Hall of Famer and NBA/NCAA analyst was asked at Tuesday’s Turner-CBS NCAA Tournament Media Day about his very public thumbs up to Republican presidential nominee John Kasich despite the fact that he always votes Democrat.

That turned into Barkley sharing his very honest thoughts on the political landscape in general. Here’s a taste:

“The Republicans always do a good job of dividing and conquering. They do a really good job of making black folks, poor white folks and Hispanics not like each other. Everybody wants to talk about black and white, when the situation is really about rich people against poor people. … “All they talk about is immigration, the notion that illegal immigrants are ruining our country taking jobs. … We’re shipping all our jobs out of the country. That’s, to me, worse than a few Hispanics who come here to work their behinds off. If you’re a poor white person and your life sucks, it’s easy for you to blame Hispanics cause you don’t want to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the reason my life sucks.’ The Republicans do a good job exploiting that.”

That’s not all of it. Barkley went on another diatribe:

“All politics is rich people screwing poor people. Poor people are too stupid to know they’re just chess pieces in a game. All the poor white people, all the poor black people, all the Hispanics, they’re in the same boat. They got no economic opportunities … they spend all their time blaming each other because rich people throw words at them like, illegal immigration, and racism and things like that. If poor people ever get smart, and realize like, ‘We should band together, rise up, instead of fighting each other,’ we probably can make a difference. … “The whole thing has turned me off because it’s gotten to the point where I watched the last eight years of Barack . The Republicans disagree with every single thing he says. I feel bad for the American people. … It’s is going to have zero effect on my life who the president is. I’ll be rich either way.”

Round Mound of Rebound in 2020, anyone?