The social media skirmish between President Trump and defenders of NFL protests is back on, and Yahoo! Sports rushed headlong into the fray today to denounce the commander in chief for opposing those pro football players who take a knee during the national anthem.
The row began when someone named Corey Jones posted the photo below of a military widow and her infant child at a gravesite, with the words "This is why we stand". Beneath the photo, Jones wrote: "We stand to honor those who fought and died defending the greatest nation the world has ever known. God bless our vets! #MAGA"
President Trump tweeted: “So beautiful. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel!”
Jay Busbee, the "Shutdown Corner" sports writer for Yahoo!, couldn't let that go without a response. He dredged up the left-wing narratives about how Colin Kaepernick began protesting police brutality and mentioned the money he's given to charities. He accused President Trump for fanning the flames of protest with his remarks in Alabama when he referred to protesters as sons of bitches who should be removed from the field. Busbee accused the president of politicizing the widow's grief:
Leaving aside the question of whether it’s appropriate to use a military widow’s grief purely for scoring political points, Trump’s tweet continues to push the narrative that the protests are disrespectful to the military. Indeed, the chief complaint of most protest opponents was that they believe kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful to the men and women who have served and, in many cases, given their lives for their country. (The second complaint is that the protesters are making their stance at an inconvenient time for viewers … which is kind of the entire idea of a protest.)
Busbee would have you believe that many vets say they didn't fight to defend the flag or the national anthem, but the freedoms represented, including the freedom to protest. He must not be familiar with the famous photo of U.S. soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima after the horrific World War II battle there.
Also, Busbee raises the usual "it's about the racial inequality and police brutality" arguments that Americans are not buying. That's borne out by today's news that the NFL's television viewership was down 10 percent this season. The NFL is hemorrhaging at the seams and a lot of people are tuning out because they are appalled by the protests.
Blame for all this controversy lies squarely at Trump's feet, Busbee would have you believe:
The protests dragged the NFL, like so many other unwitting entities and individuals, into the midst of the political strife that dominates our national conversation in the Age of Trump. And while the protests have largely stopped—only a handful of players on about a half-dozen teams still remain seated, remain in the locker room, raise a fist, or kneel during the anthems at this point—even invoking the idea of the protests remains an easy way to fire up the president’s populist base. It’s a near-certainty we haven’t seen the last of Trump’s Twitter musings on the NFL.
We also haven't seen the last of the biased media lackeys defending the unwitting entities in football uniforms disrespecting America and giving them free publicity in support of their radical and highly unpopular protests..
