Trump vs. the NFL

And also the NBA. There are stories on this all over the place, so I don't need to link to them, but Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof has nailed it, I think:

I suppose if a dictator was threatening to blow up the West Coast, Congress was about to humiliate your plans to stomp on the legacy of your hated predecessor once again, three hurricanes in a row had devastated whole cities and wiped out the infrastructure and crops of a territory, and a special counsel was about to issue indictments for a former White House official, you’d be desperately looking for something to distract the attention of the media and start a Twitter storm.

He also links to a couple of articles that pretty much summarize the whys and wherefors, such as this report from NYT:

On three teams, nearly all the football players skipped the national anthem altogether. Dozens of others, from London to Los Angeles, knelt or locked arms on the sidelines, joined by several team owners in a league normally friendly to President Trump. Some of the sport’s biggest stars joined the kind of demonstration they have steadfastly avoided.

It was an unusual, sweeping wave of protest and defiance on the sidelines of the country’s most popular game, generated by Mr. Trump’s stream of calls to fire players who have declined to stand for the national anthem in order to raise awareness of police brutality and racial injustice.

What had been a modest round of anthem demonstrations this season led by a handful of African-American players mushroomed and morphed into a nationwide, diverse rebuke to Mr. Trump, with even some of his staunchest supporters in the N.F.L., including several owners, joining in or condemning Mr. Trump for divisiveness.

Julius Thomas, a Miami Dolphins tight end who had previously stood for the anthem, knelt for it on Sunday with several players.

“To have the president trying to intimidate people — I wanted to send a message that I don’t condone that,” Thomas said, echoing the opinion of most N.F.L. players. “I’m not O.K. with somebody trying to prevent someone from standing up for what they think is important.”

Of course, it's not about race -- says the White House:

The White House legislative affairs director has insisted President Donald Trump does not see the issue of NFL players kneeling to protest police brutality towards African Americans “through a racial lens.”

On the other hand:

Every day, and in countless and unexpected ways, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, finds new ways to divide and demoralize his country and undermine the national interest. On Tuesday, he ranted from the lectern of the U.N. General Assembly about “Rocket Man” and the possibility of levelling North Korea. Now he has followed with an equally unhinged domestic performance at a rally, on Friday evening, in Huntsville, Alabama, where he set out to make African-American athletes the focus of national contempt.

In the midst of an eighty-minute speech intended to heighten the reëlection prospects of Senator Luther Johnson Strange III, Trump turned his attention to N.F.L. players, including the former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and asked a mainly white crowd if “people like yourselves” agreed with his anger at “those people,” players who take a knee during the national anthem to protest racism. . . .

“People like yourselves.” “Those people.” “Son of a bitch.” This was the same sort of racial signalling that followed the Fascist and white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is no longer a matter of “dog whistling.” This is a form of racial demagoguery broadcast at the volume of a klaxon. There is no need for Steve Bannon’s behind-the-scenes scriptwriting. Trump, who is desperate to distract his base from his myriad failures of policy, from health care to immigration, is perfectly capable of devising his racist rhetoric all on his own.

(Via BarkBarkWoofWoof.)

He's right -- it's way beyond dog whistles.

By the way -- it looks like he really has taken on the entire NFL (via Joe.My.God.):

All but two of the NFL’s 32 team owners and CEOs issued statements Saturday night and through Sunday in response to Trump’s crusade against protesting NFL players, which began in earnest during a rally Friday night in Alabama. After making a thinly veiled allusion to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked a national debate by taking a knee before August 2016 preseason games to protest police violence against minorities, Trump called on NFL coaches to get the “son of a bitch” players off the field if they continued to kneel. The president repeated his call with no less intensity on Twitter on Saturday and Sunday morning.

And just in case you've forgotten what a caring, compassionate sort of guy Trump is:

Speaking to supporters in Alabama on Friday night, he decried Kaepernick and later assailed rules meant to improve player safety, saying they hurt the game’s entertainment value and pointing to declining television ratings for NFL games.

What's a little brain damage if people are entertained, right?