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When President Donald Trump bluntly addressed the NFL players’ disrespectful national anthem protests during a rally Friday night in Alabama, his words instantly sparked condemnation from the media and the left, and prompted even more players to take a knee on Sunday.
Of course, since many of the players who knelt are black, and the protests are purportedly done in opposition to perceived racial injustice, many on the left assumed Trump’s remarks are racist. The president was asked about this assumption on Sunday afternoon during his return to the White House, according to Variety.
“We have great people representing our country, especially our soldiers, our first responders, and they should be treated with respect,” Trump said of his stance against the protests. “And when you get on your knee and you don’t respect the America flag or the anthem, that’s not being treated with respect.”
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“This has nothing to do with race. I never said anything about race,” he replied when asked if he was “inflaming racial tensions,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “This has nothing to do with race or anything else. This has to do with respect for our country and respect for our flag.”
President Trump on some NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem: “This has nothing to do with race” https://t.co/sRMnbWE8Yi
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) September 24, 2017
To be sure, even as Trump has studiously avoided making any mention of race at any point in any of his commentary regarding the national anthem protests, many on the left still presumed to know Trump’s true motivations, and accused him of being racist.
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Thus, Trump reiterated his stance Monday with a tweet that read: “The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must respect this!”
However, Trump is still a racist — so speaketh the media — thus, everything Trump says must be viewed through a racial lens, and even as he eschews mentioning race and explicitly states that his stance against the protests has nothing to do with race, it is still all about race, as evidenced by this piece in The Washington Post.
Sadly, there are those on the left so consumed by identity politics they feel it necessary to incessantly insert race into everything. So it really is no surprise that even as Trump said race has nothing to do with his opposition to the protests, and it is instead all about respect, his words were summarily dismissed and he is still smeared as a racist.
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That said, a majority of Americans and football fans feel the same way as Trump about the national anthem protests. They wish these players would take a moment to reflect that, in spite of the legitimate issues our nation needs to address, the U.S. nevertheless remains a nation full of freedom and opportunity for which others fought and died.
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via Conservative Tribune
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