Former Bills and Jets coach Rex Ryan is now an analyst for ESPN and among the Sunday NFL Countdown crew has a unique political perspective being that he is (or at least was) a Donald Trump supporter.
After Trump’s comments about NFL players kneeling at a rally on Friday night, in which he called them “sons of bitches” and said they should be fired, there was no way to have a football pregame show without taking time to discuss the president’s statement. So, ESPN spent just over 20 minutes on Sunday morning having a discussion about the comments and how players and owners are responding.
When Ryan spoke up, he seemed to indicate that he was jumping off of the Trump bandwagon after his comments and was “pissed off” and “appalled” by the president saying what he did.
“I’m pissed off I’ll be honest,” Ryan said. “I supported Donald Trump. I sat back and when he asked me to introduce him at a rally in Buffalo, I did that. But I’m reading these comments and it’s appalling to me and I’m sure it’s appalling to almost every citizen in the country. And it should be. Calling our players SOB’s and all that kind of stuff. That’s not the men that I know. Men that I know in the locker room I’m proud of. I’m proud to be associated with those people. I apologize for being pissed off, but guess what that’s it. Because right away, I’m associated with what Donald Trump stands for.”
It is, all things considered, a strong statement from Ryan and a seemingly rare instance of a Trump supporter on TV expressing disgust with something the president did. However, it also must be noted that there have been plenty of opportunities prior to this for Ryan to have come to the realization that Trump has said some terrible things in the past, but it took him coming after people he knew to get to that point.
