Donald Trump says he will ask NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to name who they believe should receive a presidential pardon.
In what Trump appears to see as a solution to the nation’s football players protesting the national anthem, he has invited them to ‘recommend’ people they believe were unfairly treated by the justice system.
He says he and a committee will review applications from the players and potentially pardon them.
NFL players began to kneel during the Star Spangled Banner in 2016 to protest police brutality and racial inequality.
Colin Kapernick (pictured with teammate Eric Reid) was the first NFL player to kneel during the national anthem in 2016
The issue enraged Trump, who previously called for the ‘sons of b****es’ who kneeled to be sacked from their teams.
‘Wouldn’t you love to see one of these [NFL team] owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!”,’ he said at an Alabama rally in September.
His tune had softened on Friday though, when he told reporters he understood why players were shunning the anthem.
‘We have a great country, you should stand for our national anthem… you shouldn’t go into a locker room when our national anthem is played,’ he told reporters on Friday before flying to the G7 Summit in Canada.
‘I am going to ask all of those people to recommend to me – because that’s what they’re protesting – people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system – and I understand that.
‘I’m going to ask them to recommend to me people that were unfairly treated; friends of theirs or people that they know about, and I’m gonna take a look at those applications, and if I find, and my committee finds, they were unfairly treated, then we will pardon them. Or at least let them out.’
President Trump has claimed he will solicit submissions from kneeling NFL players as to who he should pardon, whether its a friend of the player or ‘someone they know of’
Trump’s plan was floated in a larger speech about pardons, where the President also floated the idea of posthumously pardoning boxer Muhammed Ali for dodging the Vietnam War draft, though his conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1971.
Ron Tweel, a lawyer for the boxer’s estate and his widow, Lonnie, said: ‘We appreciate President Trump’s sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary.’
‘The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971. There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed,’ he said.
Trump also used the press conference to discuss commuting the sentence of Alice Johnson, who received a life sentence more than 20 years ago for her role in a drug trafficking operation.
He said he was delighted to be able to help the woman, who was not a famous or well-known person, and these are the people he will aim to pardon in future.
‘I would get more thrill out of pardoning people nobody has heard of, like Alice yesterday,’ he said.
The idea of kneeling caught on with other players wanting to protest police brutality and racial inequality
Trump has previously called for players who kneel to be released from their teams for disrespecting the national anthem