President Trump Launches Petition Urging Players To Stand For The National Anthem

The stupid national anthem protests are dying down. At least, I think they’re dying down. It seems like networks don’t show the national anthem portion of games on TV anymore (probably on purpose). NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell claims “half a dozen players are still protesting,” and that’s about it.

The NFL maintains that it wants players to stand for the national anthem, but the league isn’t actually going to do anything about it. NFL officials held a bunch of meetings, and it turned out to be a bunch of nothing.

“We believe everyone should stand for the national anthem. That’s an important part of our policy,” Goodell said, following the discussions.

He said the league wants to focus on why players are kneeling and talk about community based things they can do to address those issues. He said they didn’t even discuss punishing players who kneel during the national anthem. Apparently, that wasn’t necessary.

Mhm.

In other words, nothing is going to change.

President Trump wasn’t happy with the outcome.

The NFL has decided that it will not force players to stand for the playing of our National Anthem. Total disrespect for our great country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2017

That being said, Trump’s actually promoting a petition, urging players to stand for the anthem.

I still tend to agree with Rush Limbaugh. Mega dittos. Trump can have an opinion, but at the end of the day, he can’t dictate behavior. Fans can choose to boycott the NFL and directly affect its wallet, but technically, the owners, players and networks could choose to ignore the cries from fans. They’d be idiots to do so, but they could.

As Rush explained:

I am very uncomfortable with the president of the United States being able to dictate the behavior and power of anybody. That’s not where this should be coming from.

 

Trump is continually tweeting — I know what he’s doing, and I understand why he’s doing it, and his motives are pure; don’t misunderstand. But I don’t think that it is useful or helpful for any employee anywhere to be forced to do something because the government says they must. That scares hell out of me. This should come from the league, as it looks like Goodell wants it to. The owners should be demanding this, not the president. The commissioner should be demanding this, not the president.

 

We don’t want the president being able to demand anybody that he’s unhappy with behave in a way he requires. That’s scary to me, even if the president’s somebody I happen to like. This is a workplace issue. It’s the owners and the league that let this get out of hand because they didn’t know how to deal with it or were afraid to.

 

And if this is gonna be made to work, the players are gonna have to be told who the boss is and they’re gonna have to be given specific workplace rules and regulations that they know have nothing to do with the Constitution, the First Amendment, freedom of speech. If you want to work for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, you are gonna stand for the anthem. If you want to work for Dallas Cowboys, you’re gonna stand for the anthem.

This is a free market issue. I understand where Trump is coming from, but he has to remember the unique position he’s in. Don’t get me wrong. He hasn’t crossed the line yet. It’s not like he’s seriously floating NFL-related policy. I’m just saying, he’s walking a fine line. I get it– he’s trying to handle this more like a CEO, but at the end of the day, he’s POTUS.

You get what I’m saying, right?

h/t Fox News Insider