Fox & Friends co-host (and ongoing Jimmy Kimmel target) Brian Kilmeade got the ball rolling early Monday when he addressed Donald Trump’s explosive comments about the NFL anthem protests last week. In what many interpreted to be a thinly veiled jab at Colin Kaepernick, the president told a crowd in Alabama that team owner should “get that son of a bitch off the field right now” and fire them. Trump kept tweeting about the matter throughout the weekend, which resulted in even more protests during Sunday’s games. As a result, the otherwise White House-friendly Kilmeade admitted the president may have messed up.
“Yesterday, I thought the president — overall his remarks Friday and his tweets Saturday — made everything worse,” noted the Fox News personality. As damning as Kilmeade’s condemnation here may seem, however, the Fox & Friends co-host tagged it onto a two-minute explanation for why the explosive NFL anthem protests were actually President Obama’s fault. “People should get [it] clear: This did not start with President Trump. This started when President Obama was president. When Colin Kaepernick noticed taking a knee and sitting down during the national anthem. He was asked about it. Others joined him on it. It was extremely controversial.”
If that weren’t enough, Kilmeade seemingly echoed one of Trump’s tweets that same morning, in which the president insisted “[t]he issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race.” Before jabbing Trump, Kilmeade said: “If you have a problem with race in America, okay. Speak up! Muhammad Ali, Bill Russel, you could talk about anybody. Ray Lewis? No one’s been hurt by speaking up. In fact, a lot of them — Charles Barkley — when they speak their mind, they get great broadcasting jobs.” Right, because Ali’s highly publicized resistance to the Vietnam War totally didn’t hurt his career at the time.
(Via Mediaite)