“Get that son of a b***h off the field!” Donald Trump once wanted NFL owners to FIRE players who disrespected the US flag amidst kneeling fiasco
Colin Kaepernick started the trend of kneeling during national anthem that created one of the biggest controversies in the NFL.
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Donald Trump and Colin Kaepernick (Image via Business Insider and NPR)
The NFL has always been ripe with controversies that have ranged from hostile workplace environments to racial discrimination. The most recent one that reflected poorly on the league was the Deshaun Watson suspension. The Browns signed Watson to a five-year $230 million fully guaranteed deal that destroyed the quarterback market.
However, the people were furious because Watson was accused of sexual harassment by over two dozen women, and while the cases were eventually settled, it still hurt the fans to see that such a person was allowed to play in the league. The second controversy that ruled world headlines for weeks was the Brian Flores lawsuit.
Former Miami Dolphins head coach alleged that NFL teams interview minority coaches just to complete the Rooney Rule and don’t interview them to hire. Flores names the Giants and the NFL along with others in his lawsuit citing racial discrimination in the hiring process. These controversies are just the tip of the iceberg and a lot larger dispute took place a few years back that got the whole country involved.
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Donald Trump was against players kneeling during the national anthem
Back in 2016, former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose to kneel during the national anthem as a sign of protest against police brutality that crippled the nation. This move by Kaepernick divided the country into two parts – one that had no problem with him kneeling and the other, a more conservative faction, saw kneeling as a sign of disrespect to the flag.
The conservative faction was led by former President Donald Trump. The billionaire businessman who served as the POTUS from 2017 to 2021 strongly voiced his opinion of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem and openly asked the league to fire such players.“You know what’s hurting the game,” Trump said during a press conference. “when people like yourselves turn on television, and you see those people taking the knee when they are playing our great national anthem.”
He urged fans to boycott football and stop going to games if players continued to kneel. He added, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bi**h off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!'” Naturally, team owners didn’t come out and say they were firing players.
However, they did silently blacklist Colin Kaepernick from the league as he was unable to find a team willing to sign him. Maybe the owners were trying to set an example and give a warning to players from kneeling that Kaepernick was blacklisted by all 32 teams in the league. The owners wanted to make the trouble go away and stop the POTUS from asking fans to boycott the league and make it a worldwide debate topic.
This was a really dark period for the league and since then there has been improvement done by officials to make sure that no players do anything to disrespect the flag or the army veterans of the nations, while also making sure that players were free to support and promote any cause they wanted.
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Yash Karandekar
(1023 Articles Published)