During his Rose Garden press conference, President Trump claimed that former President Obama didn’t call the families of dead soldiers, a statement that he made without proof, to explain why he, the current president, had not contacted the families of the four soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger. However, that moment was not as bizarre as when Trump loosely connected Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election to tolerance for the ongoing NFL protests against racial inequality.
On Sunday, Clinton said that the anthem protests were not against the song “or our flag” but were against racism and injustice. Trump was asked about Clinton’s remarks at the Rose Garden press conference, and he launched into a long rant against Clinton:
“I think she’s wrong. Look, when they take a knee — there’s plenty of time to do knees and there’s plenty of time to do lots of other things. But when you take a knee — that’s why she lost the election. I mean, honestly, it’s that thinking, that is the reason she lost the election.
“When you go down and take a knee or any other way, you’re sitting essentially for our great national anthem, you’re disrespecting our flag and you’re disrespecting our country. And the NFL should have suspended some of these players for one game, not fire them, suspended them for one game. Then if they did it again, it could have been for two games then three games then for the season. You wouldn’t have people disrespecting our country right now.”
Trump went on to say that Clinton didn’t win because she takes the view that sitting down during the anthem is “not disrespectful.” Yet he also bashed her on “a lot of reasons” for not winning while circling back to say that her words were a travesty to the country.
Meanwhile, the NFL may continue not actually broadcasting the anthem protests in the hopes that all of this will go away soon.
(Via CNN)