President Trump plans to meet with NFL anthem kneelers and ask whom they want him to pardon
For months, President Donald Trump has clashed with NFL players who protest during the national anthem.
On Friday, he offered them an olive branch.
Before leaving for the G-7 summit in Canada, Trump told reporters outside the White House that he wants to meet with the protesters and find out whom they would like him to give a presidential pardon.
“What I’m going to do is I’m going to say to them, instead of talk — it’s all talk talk talk … I’m going to ask all of those people to recommend to me — because that’s what they’re protesting — people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system,” the president said. “And I understand that. I’m going to ask them to recommend to me people that were unfairly treated — friends of theirs or people that they know about — and I’m going to take a look at those applications, and if I find and my committee finds that they’ve been unfairly treated, then we’ll pardon them. Or at least let them out.”
It marked a surprising turn for Trump, who has often criticized the protesters.
During a rally last September, the president said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b— off the field right now. He’s fired!’?”
On the following NFL Sunday, the ranks of the protesters multiplied, as dozens of players responded by kneeling or staging other demonstrations.
The protests were started during the 2016 preseason by Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick explained.
Since then, the issue has cast a cloud over the league. Television ratings have fallen, and many fans have called for an NFL boycott.
The league tried to stop the bleeding by announcing a new policy on anthem protests last month. Players will be required to stand if they’re on the field, but they will have the option to remain in the locker room if they don’t want to stand.
Even as Trump invited the protesting players to meet with him, he condemned their tactics.
“You have a lot of people in the NFL in particular, but in sports leagues, they’re not proud enough to stand for our national anthem,” he said. “I don’t like that. … You should stand for our national anthem. You shouldn’t go in a locker room when our national anthem is played.”
On Thursday, Yahoo Sports reported that the attorneys working on Kaepernick’s collusion grievance against the league are expected to seek a federal subpoena in order to question Trump. The lawyers claim pressure from the president is the reason Kaepernick hasn’t signed with another team since opting out of his contract last March.
Trump has shown great interest in his pardon power in recent weeks, including its use for sports figures.
Last month, the president pardoned Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson, who died in 1946, was arrested in 1913 for transporting a white woman across state lines.
“I believe Jack Johnson is a worthy person to receive a pardon, to correct a wrong in our history,” Trump said.
In his remarks Friday, he also commented on a possible pardon for another boxing legend, Muhammad Ali, who died this week in 2016.
“I’m thinking about somebody that you all know very well and he went through a lot. And he wasn’t very popular then,” the president said. “He certainly, his memory is very popular now. I’m thinking about Muhammad Ali.”
Ali, citing his Muslim religious beliefs, refused to be drafted into the military in 1966 and had his heavyweight title stripped as a result. The Supreme Court eventually overturned Ali’s draft conviction in 1971, a fact that Ali’s attorney, Ron Tweel, called to Trump’s attention Friday.
“We appreciate President Trump’s sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary,” Tweel said in a statement via CBS Sports. “The U.S Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971. There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed.”
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