Three days after the United States elected Donald Trump president, Gregg Popovich lit into a country that elected a “xenophobic” “bully.” One day after Trump was sworn in, the Spurs coach unloaded with seething comments about the personality of the controversial figure and those around the White House who, Popovich feels, enable him.

In an impassioned rant that spanned about five minutes before San Antonio’s game in Cleveland on Saturday, the legendary coach used the Women’s March on Washington to springboard into the goings-on around the new president, who Popovich said cannot be believed.

“The march today was great. The message is important,” Popovich began, via My San Antonio. “It could have been a whole lot of groups marching. Somebody said on TV, ‘What’s the message?’ The message is obvious: Our president comes in with the lowest rating of anybody whoever came into the office. There’s a majority of people out there, since Hillary [Clinton] won the popular vote, that don’t buy his act.

“… You really can’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth. You really can’t.”

Popovich pointed to various dubious Trump claims, including that thousands in New Jersey celebrated the fall of the Twin Towers.

“All those thousands that were on the rooftops after 9/11? There were two,” Popovich said.

“‘We went to Hawaii, checked his birth certificate and my investigators couldn’t believe what they found,'” Popovich said, describing the birther movement Trump clung to, which threatened to discredit the legitimacy of Barack Obama.

“There’s a difference between respecting the office of the presidency and who occupies it. And that respect has to be earned,” Popovich, 67, said. “It’s hard to be respectful of someone when we all have kids, and we’re watching him be misogynistic and xenophobic and racist, and making fun of handicapped people.”

Popovich was particularly harsh on the advisers who surround the president. Earlier Saturday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer angrily alleged that Trump’s inauguration fielded “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” a statistic he did not back up and did not jibe with any photographic or Nielsen evidence.

“What really bothers me are the people who are around him — the Sean Spicers, the [Trump counselor] Kellyanne Conway, the [Chief of Staff] Reince Priebus, who know who he is and actually have the cynical approach and disingenuous attitude to really defend him and try to make it look like he didn’t say what he said.

“When he’s mad at the media for their reporting what he said, it just boggles my mind. When Kellyanne Conway said the other day that he wasn’t really making fun of that handicapped person, it was really incredible. It makes you wonder how far can someone go to actually cover for somebody that much.”

In November, Popovich bemoaned the frustrated country that elected Trump. Watching millions protest was heartening for him.

“I felt great today watching the march, in protest to how he has conducted himself, because it tells me I really do live in a country where a lot of people care,” Popovich said. “We have to be vigilant, to be sure. Although we all hope he does good things for our country, that we don’t get embarrassed by him and roll back liberties that have been worked for for so long in so many different areas.

“…There was a young lady on today who said, ‘I just wished he had gone up there and said something like … I would really like to bring the people who don’t feel, or I know some of you are scared,’ Popovich added. “But he can’t do that because bullies don’t do that. That’s why.”