US President Donald Trump has paid tribute to Hollywood legend Chuck Norris, who died suddenly at the age of 86.
Trump told the media on Friday: “Chuck Norris died. I didn’t know that. He was a great guy. He was a really good, tough cookie. You didn’t want to fight him. Let me tell you, he was a tough, great guy. He was a great supporter. Wow. That’s a shame.”
Meanwhile, a video of Trump holding a football and a helmet has been widely circulated, with claims that it shows the moment he learned of the actor’s death.
The video is actually a White House clip of Trump receiving the Commander-in-Chief Trophy, football and helmet from the Navy team after defeating the Army.
The former martial arts champion and ’80s action movie hero who fought bad guys in “Code of Silence,” “Missing in Action” and “The Delta Force” and upheld the law in the TV series “Walker, Texas Ranger” died Thursday, his family said in a statement on his Instagram account Friday.
“While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and at peace,” the statement said.
The six-time undefeated world professional middleweight karate champion, whose tough-guy image inspired satirical “facts” that made him an Internet phenomenon, was hospitalized in Hawaii on Thursday, Variety reported.
Norris has starred in more than twenty films portraying silent loners, soldiers, police officers, veterans and all-American heroes who captured criminals, freed prisoners of war, rescued hostages and fought terrorists.
Using his roundhouse kicks, he fought martial arts icon Bruce Lee at the Colosseum in Rome in his 1973 film debut, “The Way of the Dragon.” Together with actor Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, he helped defeat the villain Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 2012 blockbuster ‘The Expendables 2’.
