Sharply swerving out of his lane today, Sports ("and Politics") Illustrated football writer Robert Klemko ventured into White House politics and accused President Donald Trump of criticizing the NFL to distract attention away from FBI investigations of his administration.
Klemko began his attack on the president by writing, "Monday, if you hadn't heard, was a Bad Day for the President." Told that the majority of Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles were boycotting his White House reception, Trump called off what would have been a watered-down event and issued this tweet:
That set off a chain of angry remarks about Trump by NBA luminaries LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Steve Kerr, the Eagles' Harold Jenkins and this from former Eagle Torrey Smith's Twitter account: "It’s a cowardly act to cancel the celebration because the majority of the people don’t want to see you. To make it about the anthem is foolish."
To Klemko, President Trump is feuding with the NFL to distract away from political problems. His feud with the NFL is "fun" and it's "red meat for his base ... that gets the people going," Klemko then offers up some red meat of his own:
"Sticking it to uppity black millionaires has been good for business since the first cretin came up with the lie that the first black president wasn't born in this country, and well before that even. But that's not what Monday's statement was about. This was play-action. This was John Elway faking the handoff to a migraine-addled Terrell Davis in the Super Bowl. This was Dan Marino faking the spike and tossing it into the waiting hands of Mark Ingram Sr."
It's "tremendous deceit of the President's central premise that protesting NFL players dishonor the men and women of the military by protesting during the national anthem," Klemko writes. Additionally, Trump is a "totalitarian tough guy" who fails to recognize that NFL protest is "the daily yield of a healthy democracy."
The frequent fencing with the NFL is mere theater, a Trump-generated distraction from all the drama surrounding charges of collusion with Russia and FBI raids. As Klemko tells it:
"White House press secretary Sarah Sanders dodged questions about her statement last August that the President 'certainly didn't dictate' a misleading statement Donald Trump Jr. released regarding a reported meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign, a statement disputed by a letter sent in January by the President's lawyers to the special counsel investigating him. But that was just the appetizer."
Klemko, the would-be White House correspondent, continues: "Next there came two bombshells, a veritable surf-and-turf on a fun-filled Monday":
"There was the late-breaking news that a review of documents seized in an FBI raid of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's home and office found that just a small fraction of them—less than 200 of nearly 300,000 documents and files—are privileged or partially privileged according to a court-appointed watchdog, contrary to arguments made by lawyers for Trump who are not under federal investigation. On top of that, special counsel prosecutors accused former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of tampering with witnesses in the tax and money laundering case against him. He could face jail time."
This is the new normal on your sports pages. It's running cover for socialist presidents and social justice warrior athletes, aligning with the White House press corps attack dogs to bite at the heels of Republican presidents.
