White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that football players upset about police brutality should direct their anger and law enforcement officers, not the nation’s flag.
‘I think if the debate is really, for them, about police brutality, they should probably protest the officers on the field that are protecting them instead of the American flag,’ she told a reporter who asked her about the White House’s framing of the demonstrations during a news conference.
Asked to clarify her statement by another journalist, Sanders said she was not saying players should actually protest police.
‘I was kind of pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact that if the goal is and the message is that of police brutality, which they’ve stated, it doesn’t seem very appropriate to protest the American flag. I’m not sure how those two things would be combined.’
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that football players upset about police brutality should direct their anger and law enforcement officers, not the nation’s flag
Sanders’ misspeak followed a period of intense questioning about the president’s remark Friday night at a political rally about football players taking a knee during the national anthem.
Trump said NFL owners should ‘get that son of a b**** off the field right now’ and tell him ‘he’s fired,’ arguing that the players are ‘disrespecting the flag.’
The statement created immediate backlash. Trump was accused of inflaming racial tensions once again. His remarks were compared to early statements on Charlottesville, when he said that some attendees of the white supremacist rally were ‘very fine people.’
Most of the players participating in the protests at NFL games, which were started by former San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick last season, are African-American. They say they are protesting racial injustice.
Trump has continued to hammer away at the issue, tweeting about it again and again since his initial remarks at a Luther Strange for Senate event on Friday evening.
The president stopped to speak to reporters about it yesterday, as well, as he prepared to make the journey from his weekend estate to the White House.
‘This has nothing to do with race. I’ve never said anything about race. This has nothing to do with race or anything else. This has to do with respect for our country, and respect for our flag,’Trump said.
Tackling questions on the issue Monday, Sanders said the message and focus of the demonstrations ‘has long since changed.’
‘A lot has been communicated over these last several weeks, through this process, through this protest by these players,’ she said.
The remark prompted a reporter to ask why the White House gets to decide what the protests are about.
‘Colin Kaepernick says that his protest is about fighting police brutality, fighting racial disparity, racial injustice, you’re not taking him at his word,’ Sirus XM’s Jared Rizzi said. ‘When white supremacists say that their protest is about heritage and not hate, the President does take them at their word.
‘Why is there this disparity about who gets to decide what protest is about?’
To that Sanders said, ‘I think if this is the debate is really for them about police brutality, they should probably protest the officers on the field that are protecting them instead of the American flag.’
Sanders’ misspeak followed a period of intense questioning about the president’s remark Friday night at a political rally about football players taking a knee during the national anthem
She moved on then, but a reporter asked later if she was actually encouraging players to protest police.
‘No, no that’s not what I’m saying. I was kind of pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact that if the goal is and the message is that of police brutality, which they’ve stated, it doesn’t seem very appropriate to protest the American flag. I’m not sure how those two things would be combined,’ she explained.
The president has been immensely supportive of law enforcement, having run a law and order campaign.
At an event earlier this year with police, he generated controversy when he told officers they could ‘rough’ up people they were criminals.
Sanders said then that Trump was ‘making a joke’ and was not endorsing police brutality.