Sporting Green Pence stokes controversy with walkout after anthem protest at 49ers game.
INDIANAPOLIS — If you thought the displays during the national anthem at football games were going to fade away quietly, the highest office in the land just guaranteed that they would not.
If you thought that Colin Kaepernick’s story couldn’t get any weirder, CBS just guaranteed it could.
As it has in recent weeks, Sunday morning’s NFL schedule started with off-field drama. And, as has been the case for over a year, the 49ers were right in the center of it.
CBS aired a report by Jason La Canfora about speaking with the former 49ers quarterback. La Canfora tweeted that he spent “a few hours” with Kaepernick. He said on air that Kaepernick is “not planning on kneeling. He’s donating all his jersey sales. And he’s
planning on standing for the anthem if given the opportunity.”
As that story was breaking, Kaepernick’s former team was on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium, warming up. It was a big day in Indianapolis. The Colts were retiring Peyton Manning’s number at halftime. The former governor of Indiana and current vice president of the United States was coming in to honor him. At least that’s what he said in a tweet at approximately 8:30 a.m.
But it seems that Vice President Mike Pence, whose visit to the stadium required extra layers of security, was less interested in honoring Manning than in executing an elaborate taxpayer-funded publicity stunt. One that would fan the flames on the divisive issue of protests against racial injustice during the playing of the national anthem.
The media traveling with the vice president — who flew into town on Saturday night from mourning the dead in Las Vegas — were held outside the stadium in a van, according to a pool report, and warned that Pence’s stay at the game could be short.
Pence knew he was all but guaranteed to see players kneeling during the anthem, since the Colts were playing the 49ers. The 49ers are the team where the protests originally started, with Kaepernick in August 2016. Since that time, for almost 14 months, at least one 49er and often several have continued to kneel before every game. With new white supremacist marches held in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday night, it was unlikely the 49ers were going to suddenly stop on this particular Sunday.
Predictably, when the anthem played, media members counted 23 49ers players taking a knee. The Colts stood with their arms locked together on the opposite sideline. No one in the crowd booed, at least not audibly.
But eight minutes later, the vice president sent out this tweet on his official account:
“I left today’s Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.”
Pence went back to his hotel. A short time later he flew to Los Angeles for a four-stop GOP fundraiser expected to raise $5 million.
Pence sent out several more tweets about leaving. And then his boss, President Trump, sent out his own:
“I asked @VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled, disrespecting our country. I am proud of him and @SecondLady Karen.”
The entire visit seemed to be a bit of kabuki theater, designed to ensure that the anthem story and the outrage stay at the forefront of our political discussion, and not get buried by other, more pressing events. Targeting another team from the “liberal Bay Area” — just like the Warriors — is grabbing some low-hanging fruit.
“I think it was a P.R. stunt,” said safety Eric Reid, who was the first to join Kaepernick last year and has continued to be a spokesman for the movement, most recently with an op-ed in the New York Times after the president called a player who protests a “son of a bitch.”
“He know that our team has the most players protesting, so he stopped to watch us do it and left in an effort to try to thwart what we’re trying to accomplish,” Reid said. “This is a case in point for systematic oppression. This is a powerful man with a huge platform and this is what he chooses to do. Fly in on taxpayer money to confuse the issue that we’re trying to control the narrative on. “It’s really disheartening.” Throughout, Kaepernick has remained silent. Which is why the CBS story seemed to be such a big deal — he had finally talked.
But the story got warped through the day. First La Canfora walked back his comments, saying he hadn’t directly asked Kaepernick about whether he would kneel or not, but was basing his remarks on earlier reports about Kaepernick. That seemed odd if he spent “hours” with the quarterback. Then a member of Kaepernick’s entourage posted on Instagram that Kaepernick didn’t grant CBS an interview, but had bumped into the reporter in the lobby. Both Kaepernick and girlfriend Nessa Diab retweeted the post, making it appear that they agreed with it. Diab later tweeted that Kaepernick has never said that he would refrain from kneeling.
Kaepernick tweeted out, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” (He attributed it to Winston Churchill, as it is on various quote sites, but that is apparently incorrect).
“Nessa’s the closest person to Colin, so I would trust what she says about that,” said Reid, who speaks regularly to Kaepernick.
By the way, the game the vice president missed was a woeful affair featuring two lousy quarterbacks. Either one of whom could easily be replaced by a certain quarterback who is unemployed.