Trump and Sports Protests

[jerrym]

CNN is reporting that from Friday to Monday, Trump tweeted about the NFL and the national anthem sixteen times, health care twice, taxes once, while making zero tweets on the North Korean crisis and the Puerto Rican hurricane catastrophe involving 3.5 million American citizens. Its good to know that he's got people focused on the most important global issues, not on these insignificant problems on which he has accomplished nothing. But maybe that's the strategy.
While Sidney Crosby has said it is a great honour to be invited to the White House as Stanley Cup Champions of the NHL, and the also predominantly Caucasian NASCAR received an invitation as well, others in the NHL and other leagues took a different view. Despite demands by Trump that players who do not stand for the National Anthem be fired, Raptors president Masai Ujiri proclaimed no one on the Toronto team is getting fired for such protests.

“Our country is an embarrassment to the world,” said San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, never one for holding his tongue. Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal suggested that Trump was acting like “a clown.” LeBron James said that one person did not run the United States, “and damn sure not him.” ...
DeMar DeRozan of the Raptors said Trump brought much of this on himself. “You’ve got your president on Twitter more than a 12-year-old saying the most outrageous things,” he said.
DeRozan, who grew up in a rough part of Los Angeles, said the issues that started this whole controversy — Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality — are important to address. He remembers being afraid to look police officers in the eye “because you didn’t want to be questioned.” He said he had friends who were at his home one day, and killed by police later that week.“Even now, I drive a nice car and I’m still being questioned: ‘How you get this car?’” ...
Hockey players were speaking out on Monday, too, with Blake Wheeler saying in Winnipeg that he had enough of Trump’s rhetoric and teammate Matt Hendricks saying while he wouldn’t kneel during the anthem, he would respect those who did. “It’s not just the flag,” he said. “For the others that choose to take a knee, it’s a different reason.”There was a lot of that, too, including Toronto’s Auston Matthews, who said he felt kneeling was disrespectful to the military but he understood free speech was protected by “one of those amendments.”

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/v...81663960199143