For fifth straight day, Trump continues his Twitter tirade
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is keeping up his running commentary on the NFL — tweeting Tuesday about the football league’s TV ratings and suggesting it bar players from kneeling during the national anthem.
The NFL, for its part, was not all that eager to continue the back-andforth with Trump.
“He’s exercising his freedom to speak,” league spokesman Joe Lockhart said on a conference call with reporters, “and I’m exercising my freedom not to react.”
Asked about the possibility of the NFL punishing players or league employees for actions during the pregame anthems, Lockhart said: “I will leave the hypotheticals and the speculation to others. I’m not going to go down that road.”
Trump brought up the topic for the fifth day in a row, dating to a speech to a crowd of supporters in Alabama on Friday night, when he referred to an NFL player making a gesture during “The StarSpangled Banner” as a “son of a bitch.”
In response, more than 200 players knelt, sat on a bench or took other actions during the anthems at games Sunday. On Monday night, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones — a staunch supporter of Trump — and his players knelt, arm-in-arm, before the anthem, then rose for the playing of the song ahead of the team’s 28-17 victory at the Arizona Cardinals.
Some spectators at Arizona’s stadium booed while the Cowboys knelt, which Trump tweeted was the “loudest I have ever heard.”
Among his other tweets Tuesday: “The NFL has all sorts of rules and regulations. The only way out for them is to set a rule that you can’t kneel during our National Anthem!”
And this: “Ratings for NFL football are way down except before game starts, when people tune in to see whether or not our country will be disrespected!”
The ratings for Monday’s Cowboys-Cardinals game were up 63 percent from the equivalent game a year ago, which went up against a presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton. The ratings for Week 3 of the NFL season were 3 percent higher than the same week last season.