Donald Trump Honors Boxing Legend He Once Implied Didn't Exist

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump honored the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali in a tweet Friday, calling him a “truly great champion and a wonderful guy.”

Which is awkward, given that Trump has previously implied that someone like Ali didn’t exist, and called for a ban on members of Ali’s religion from entering the country.

In December, Trump questioned President Barack Obama's praise of Muslim Americans, and particularly his calling them "our sports heroes."

Trump couldn’t wrap his orange head around the “sports heroes” part, tweeting, “What sport is he talking about, and who?” It was an odd question as he had personally met numerous Muslim sports stars in the past, including Ali, who converted to Islam in 1964.

Soon after, Trump proposed a truly horrific plan -- to ban all Muslims, from refugees to tourists, from entering the United States, as a way to thwart terrorism. (He has since attempted to write off the remark as “just a suggestion.”)

Ali himself responded to the bigoted "suggestion" in a statement.

“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world,” Ali wrote. “True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.”

What's more, BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kacysnki pointed out on Twitter Saturday that -- 16 years ago -- Trump credited Ali with teaching him about tolerance. In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump wrote:

Too bad Trump seems to have forgotten what he learned.

Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.