Tag: NFL

Trump rejects Fauci’s warning about football’s return

The president’s rebuke came after Fauci threw cold water on football’s plans to spring back to action.

President Donald Trump on Friday rebuked his administration’s top infectious disease expert, rejecting Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warning that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic could keep football from returning this fall.

“Tony Fauci has nothing to do with NFL Football,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “They are planning a very safe and controlled opening.”

The president’s social media post put him at odds with the man who spent weeks as perhaps the most prominent face of the White House’s coronavirus response team. But Fauci’s role appears to have diminished in recent weeks as the Trump administration has shifted toward efforts aimed at reopening the country. Continue reading.

Trump loses 2 pivotal allies in his anti-kneeling crusade: NASCAR and the NFL

Both are vowing to stand up for racial justice in a way that could challenge the president’s relationship with each organization.

President Donald Trump has long had two cherished American institutions standing beside him as he railed against athletes taking a knee during the national anthem: NASCAR and the NFL.

This week, they both started to walk away.

Bending to the cultural moment, NASCAR and the NFL in recent days reversed course on their approach to athletes protesting racial injustice. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he had been wrong for not listening to protesting players earlier and encouraged “all to speak out and peacefully protest.” Meanwhile, NASCAR relaxed rules barring kneeling during the national anthem and banned Confederate flags from its events. Within days, a NASCAR driver was circling a track in a race car emblazoned with #BlackLivesMatter and a NASCAR official was taking a knee during prerace ceremonies. Continue reading.

Trump fundraising off Pence’s NFL walkout

The following article by Olivia Beavers was posted on the Hill website October 9, 2017:

© Getty Images

President Trump is fundraising off of Vice President Pence’s dramatic walkout from an Indianapolis Colts game on Sunday, when several San Francisco 49ers kneeled during “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“Yesterday members of the San Francisco 49ers took a knee during our National Anthem. Their stunt showed the world that they don’t believe our flag is worth standing for,” the president said Monday in an email from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee. Continue reading “Trump fundraising off Pence’s NFL walkout”

Trump’s Racist Attack On NFL Players Is A Losing Game

The following article by Gene Lyons was posted on the National Memo website September 27, 2017:

Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports/File Photo

For normal people, sports often serve as a refuge from politics. The President of the United States is not among them. Donald Trump’s idea of a spectator sport, it can’t be emphasized too often, is WWE professional wrestling: a phony, pre-scripted spectacle most often on racial and ethnic themes, mainly featuring steroid abusers insufficiently athletic for real pro competition.

Not for nothing was Trump voted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame years before he was elected to anything else. Swaggering, boasting, name-calling and throwing laughably fake punches at antagonists who topple like bowling pins—those are Trump’s skills. Continue reading “Trump’s Racist Attack On NFL Players Is A Losing Game”

The NFL beat Trump. Soundly.

The following column by Jerry Brewer was posted on the Washington Post website September 24, 2017:

Players from several NFL teams peacefully protested President Trump’s recent comments during the national anthem on game day Sunday, Sept. 24. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

The NFL players stood, knelt, raised fists, sat, abstained . . . whatever felt right. They did it mostly as a team, a collection of individuals who choose to play together and sacrifice for each other. During the national anthem, they didn’t act like a brainwashed mass who had traded their diversity just to wear the same colors.

The latter is a flat and uninformed way to view the concept of team, and the same could be said for the different ways we act as American citizens. You have to understand that to grasp the power and poignancy of one of the most meaningful Sundays in NFL history. Throughout the nation and in London, the league responded to President Trump’s scathing, profane and ignorant criticism by showing him two things he can neither comprehend nor inspire as a leader: empathy and unity. Continue reading “The NFL beat Trump. Soundly.”

Why the divider in chief embraces culture wars

The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve was posted on the Washington Post website September 25, 2017:

Trump: Fire NFL players who kneel during national anthem

THE BIG IDEA: The most fitting slogan for Donald Trump’s populist campaign, which continues nearly a year after the 2016 election ended, might be “us against them.” I don’t know Latin, but I do know that what we saw from the president this weekend is the opposite of e pluribus unum. He is the divider in chief.

Trump, who was a developer before he became a reality TV star and then a politician, has long been a builder of straw men. Everyone knows that he trades on controversy, but his chaotic approach to governing also depends on constantly presenting the American people with false binary choices. Continue reading “Why the divider in chief embraces culture wars”

This is what the flag stands for, Mr. President

The following commentary by the Editorial Board of the Washington Post was posted on their website September 24, 2017:

IN 1943, with the nation mobilized for war against fascism, schoolchildren in West Virginia were required each morning to salute the American flag. The purpose, seemingly unexceptionable — and in fact not objected to by many — was “teaching, fostering and perpetuating the ideals, principles and spirit of Americanism.”

However, to Jehovah’s Witnesses the flag was an “image,” which, under their religious beliefs, their children were forbidden to salute. Students refused to do so and were expelled from school; parents were prosecuted; eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court. Continue reading “This is what the flag stands for, Mr. President”