Jace Evans
USA TODAY
Printed 11: 45 PM EDT Jun 20, 2020
President Donald Trump held a rally Saturday night for the first time in three months, hitting on a myriad of topics in front of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, crowd.
One topic that came up: the theory of taking a knee at some stage within the national anthem.
“And veil this to the NFL. I love the NFL, I love Roger Goodell, however I didn’t love what he said per week ago,” Trump said, relating to the commissioner’s video of succor for Dim gamers, which the president perceived as the NFL giving its blessing to gamers to kneel at some stage within the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Outmoded San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first started kneeling at some stage within the national anthem in 2016 to sing police brutality and diverse racial and social injustices. Trump maintains that kneeling is disrespectful to the flag and the nation.
“I said ‘the effect did that advance from within the heart of the summer season? No one’s even asking,’ ” Trump persisted, earlier than emphatically announcing to cheers: “We will by no means kneel to our national anthem or our unheard of American flag. We will stand proud, and we can stand tall.”
Protests were ongoing all around the nation following the demise of George Floyd, a Dim man who died after a Minneapolis police officer held his knee to his neck for nearly 9 minutes, whilst Floyd pleaded “I will no longer breathe.” Goodell’s video comments came after gamers known as on the NFL to “condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Dim folk.”
Goodell said in response that “I in my view sing with you, and are attempting to be segment of the unheard of-wanted change on this nation.”
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Kneeling at some stage within the anthem modified into smartly-liked in 2017 after Trump made derogatory remarks at a rally about gamers who selected to capture a knee in sing. He it seems understanding that can maybe well largely be the close of it, even though there were hundreds of gamers who own persisted taking a knee or demonstrating at some stage within the anthem within the years since.
“I believed we received that wrestle with the NFL. Their stadiums were emptying out,” Trump said Saturday night. “Took them a truly long time to build up you support. A form of folk didn’t love that.”
Whereas NFL viewership did decline in 2017 – even though it is largely unsure how dapper a role the protests performed in that, if any – the league has had two straight seasons of rankings increases.
Trump has said he may maybe no longer watch NFL video games this season if there’s kneeling.
