President Donald Trump said that the NFL should have suspended quarterback Colin Kaepernick the first time he kneeled for the National Anthem.
‘The NFL should have suspended him for one game and he would never have done it again,’ he said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday night.
‘They could have then suspended him for two games and they could have suspended him again if he did it a third time, for the season, and you would never have had a problem.’
Trump, who gave the interview from a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was harping on his opinion that not standing for the anthem is ‘anti-American.’
President Donald Trump said that the NFL should have suspended quarterback Colin Kaepernick the first time he kneeled for the National Anthem
Trump said that if the NFL had suspended Kaepernick after the first time he knelt for the anthem ‘he never would have done it again. Kaepernick, who is pictured on October 2, 2016, began kneeling last year to protest police brutality and racism
Kaepernick began kneeling in August 2016 to protest police brutality and racism while he was playing for the San Francisco 49ers.
The narrative of the protest, though, as the president grows increasingly infuriated by the number of players choosing to join in the kneeling with each passing week.
‘I will tell you,’ Trump told Hannity.
‘You cannot disrespect our country, our flag, our anthem, you cannot do that.’
On Tuesday NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took a public stance on the issue in a letter to team owners.
He wrote that he believes all players should stand for the anthem, writing that the league is going to consider a rule change that will make this required at each game.
Trump, who gave the interview from a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was harping on his opinion that not standing for the anthem is ‘anti-American’
Trump used the interview as an opportunity to go through a number of his other most popular talking points as well.
He spoke first about the ongoing Russia investigation – calling it an ‘excuse used by the Democrats when they lost the election.’
‘They sat in a room and they said, “Wow, we look bad,”‘ Trump mocked.
‘The morning after, in fact, it’s been written about in various book, or a book, bu they said “Why did you lose the election?”
‘And they said, “Ah, it was Russia!” It wasn’t Russia! It was a bad candidate.’
THe book he was likely referring to was Hillary Clinton’s recently released memoir about the campaign, titled What Happened.
Trump then went on to speak about the 2015 Iran nuclear deal – calling it ‘incompetent’.
‘This is the worst deal. We got nothing,’ he said about the piece of Obama legislation.