Trump’s Divisive and Relentless Politicization of the NFL
The day after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign-finance laws allegedly at the behest of Donald Trump, and Paul Manafort was convicted of tax fraud by a jury, the president emailed his supporters with a fund-raising appeal. It had nothing to do with his former aides.
The email invoked ESPN’s recent announcement that the network does not plan to show the national anthem before Monday-night games this football season—and, in turn, it invoked the players who have knelt during the anthem to protest racial injustice and police violence the past two seasons. “If ‘America’ is too offensive for anyone in our country, then what are they doing in America?” the email read, before accusing ESPN of a “spineless surrender to the politically correct liberal mob.”
Never mind that ESPN’s policy was not a departure from previous seasons. No matter what has swirled around the Trump presidency—or perhaps because of what has swirled around it—Trump has reliably made football, and in particular the NFL, central to his politics over his year and a half in the Oval Office.
The administration has relished making Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began to kneel during the anthem ahead of the 2016 season, a chief foil. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects the flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now?’” Trump
