Longtime Republican campaign consultant Ed Rollins Saturday remembered when Muhammad Ali, who died Friday at age 74, endorsed President Ronald Reagan's re-election bid in 1984.
"He came and met with the president in the Oval Office," Rollins told Uma Pemmaraju on
Fox News. Ali and the president met in 1983.
"He was still a very handsome man," he said. "There's a picture of the two of them throwing punches at each other.
"In 1984, the campaign that I ran for Reagan, he basically endorsed Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primary, where Jackson lost to [former Vice President Walter] Mondale.
"He came over and endorsed us," Rollins told Fox. "We used him in billboards.
"We had these great billboards of him and Floyd Patterson and Joe Frazier — sort of an 'America loves a champion' — with Reagan throwing a punch at him.
"He was a phenomenal person."
Other politicians, both Republican and Democrat, also praised Ali on Twitter:
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