In role as nation’s adult, Trump again takes a knee
Two weeks before President Trump performed for his base by taking on the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, Trump got a lesson in how he should have reacted to athletes who protest during the national anthem.
During the team’s final preseason game, Cleveland Browns players staged the largest kneel-down demonstration of any in the NFL. In response, the city’s police union said its members would not help to carry a large American flag before the Browns’ home opener a week later.
As The Plain Dealer reported, the players didn’t blow off the union. They worried that police officers and others had misconstrued their intent. They met with the police chief. They planned to ride with officers and hold town hall meetings with them, with the common goal of improving neighborhoods.
In addition, the owners got involved. Jimmy Haslam and his wife, Dee, agreed to help with the players’ community-building efforts. In an interview with ESPN, Dee Haslam said, “Until we start talking about race and equality and building up neighborhoods and working together, we’re not going to be able to solve the problem.”
Before that opening game, the players who had protested locked arms with police officers, other first responders and members of the armed forces. A video broadcast what The Plain Dealer called a message of “unity and treating each other with respect.”
South Florida sports fans might have missed this news. We were preoccupied with Hurricane Irma. Obviously, Trump also missed it. Or he didn’t care.
It would be easy to dismiss Trump’s latest rant — the latest fight he needlessly has picked — as only about sports. In fact, it reveals yet again why Trump is singularly unqualified to be president.
Trump can’t let anything go, and he makes everything personal. He didn’t criticize “players” for kneeling or sitting. He said “son of a bitch.”
As a result, Trump discovered Newtonian politics: For every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, however, the reaction was a tsunami of hostility toward Trump, even from NFL owners who had donated money toward his inauguration. Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys became the latest Monday night. That’s like teenage girls turning against Taylor Swift.
For this latest off-topic rant at a rally in Huntsville, Ala., Trump hurt only himself. Similar name-calling on North Korea endangers the country and the world.
Referring to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and threatening to destroy that country is a big step up from disinviting NBA star Steph Curry to the White House after Curry said he wouldn’t come, but it’s all of a piece. It’s like taunting the snarling guard dog over and over and hoping that he won’t jump the chain-link fence.
For six weeks, Trump’s rhetoric has turned North Korea from a problem into a potential crisis. The supposedly brilliant negotiator hasn’t scared Kim Jong Un, but he’s scared all the military and diplomatic officials in the Trump administration who worry about the two nations stumbling into nuclear war.
To Trump, though, it’s all about himself. After North Korea threatened to launch a missile at Guam, Trump bragged about a potential tenfold increase in tourism to the island. For what? A suicide vacation? And we know Trump was serious, because he has no sense of humor.
National anthem protests understandably anger some Americans, especially veterans. Behind those symbolic protests, however, are such substantial issues as law enforcement and racial profiling and economic inequality.
Presidents define themselves not just by policy but also by whether they seek to unify or divide. Trump has continued the divisive racial demagoguery of his campaign. Seventy percent of NFL players, including most of the protesters, are African-American. So is Steph Curry.
Trump could have saluted the good people in Cleveland. He could have acknowledged the emotions that protests trigger while noting that peaceful protest, however controversial, is a hallmark of a free society.
Instead. Trump went low, as he did after the violence in Charlottesville, Va. He played the child, not the adult. Then, as now, he didn’t back down. Only losers back down. Meanwhile, as multiple news reports suggest, some of our key allies worry less about Kim Jong Un than they do about Donald Trump.
Email Randy Schultz: randy@bocamag.com