Trump’s NFL? New Dictates Show How Slippery a Slope League’s Anthem Policy Is

No Philadelphia Eagles player knelt or remained in the locker room during the national anthem last year.

That fact needs to be emphasized, new nike nfl jerseys cheap reinforced and restated as often as possible in the hours and days to come. Already, the President of the United States and his staunchest supporters are implying they did. Already, major news outlets have repurposed images of Eagles players kneeling in prayer to confuse the matter.

Facts are important. Whatever you think of kneeling in protest during the anthem, the fact remains that no Eagles ever did so. None of them.

But the president’s new NFL anthem policy doesn’t really have anything to do with the Eagles. It barely has anything to do with the anthem.

It’s about control. The NFL ceded it buy nike nfl jerseys cheap . The White House seized it.

Someone at the White House is aware that no Eagles did the things they are accused of doing. That’s why Monday’s official statement from the White House Press Secretary disinviting them from Tuesday’s traditional post-Super Bowl meeting with the president claims the Eagles “disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”cheap nfl nike jerseys china

With that statement, the president wasn’t only using a gotcha technicality on the Eagles (many players did indeed lock arms and raise fists to bring attention to social causes) and inferring that they somehow protested his policy or the military (not issues like police brutality and prison reform)—nfl nike jersey cheap he was also dictating a whole new policy to the NFL.

A Tuesday morning series of tweets clarified the president’s position on how the NFL will be expected to proceed. “Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!” he wrote in one tweet. “NFL, cheap nike nfl jersey no escaping to Locker Rooms!” he added in another. cheap nike nfl jerseys wholesale The president yoked other sports to his new dictates during his tweetstorm in a way that suggested he was marginalizing the Eagles and NFL. Meanwhile, the White House prepared to hold its own Super Bowl ceremony without any Super Bowl participants Tuesday afternoon in what promised to be an odd celebration of symbolic patriotism and itself.