Thiel: 'Get out' is what Trump told NFL players

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Before his racist tweets, Trump suggested protesting NFL players should leave. He doesn’t care about the difference between dissent and disloyalty. Some of us do.

The furor over President Trump’s racist tweets that four liberal congresswomen should pack up and leave has inflamed U.S. culture perhaps as no other reckless rhetoric in his tumultuous tenure. But on the eve of training camps for NFL teams, it needs to be pointed out that the vile attempt to dis-Americanize his critics didn’t reveal itself just last week.

The first trial balloon in his tenure to re-start the dormant nativist trope of “love it or leave it” went up in sports, the platform upon which numerous American cultural conflicts historically have played out.

The passage of time coupled with the contemporary overload of news makes it easy to forget that in May 2018, Trump responded to the word that NFL owners and players agreed on a policy that could result in discipline if players knelt or otherwise protested during the national anthem.

The new protocol came after the 2017 season of widespread, non-disruptive protests by numerous African-American players over police shootings of unarmed black men and social injustice, which followed QB Colin Kaepernick’s lead in 2016.

After Trump earlier called protesters “sons of bitches” who should be fired, he gave an interview to Fox & Friends on Fox News.

“You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe they shouldn’t be in the country,” Trump said.

Between the new NFL policy and the players’ own divisions on how to proceed in 2018, the protests dissipated, although some players took up the league’s option of staying in the locker room during the anthem.

So in the mind of Trump, he won, Few others then thought much about his suggestion of relocation.

-more-

http://sportspressnw.com/2243673/2019/thiel-get-out-is-what-trump-told-nfl-players

[JonLP24]

1. Yep

Trump Also Told Colin Kaepernick That He Should Leave the Country

Donald Trump’s tweets over the weekend suggesting that “ ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen … go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” were noteworthy for their explicit bigotry if not their revelations about the president’s beliefs. “If Donald Trump has a theory of anything, it is a theory of American citizenship,” Jamelle Bouie wrote in the New York Times on Monday. “It’s simple. If you are white, then regardless of origin, you have a legitimate claim to American citizenship and everything that comes with it. If you are not, then you don’t.”

That attitude—and that specific language about vacating the country—felt unprecedented when directed at members of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the same time, it very closely echoes rhetoric Trump has used about black athletes. During his presidential campaign, Trump attacked Colin Kaepernick for protesting police brutality by declining to stand during the national anthem. “Maybe he should find a country that works better for him,” Trump said. As president, Trump extended that sentiment to all NFL players who don’t stand during the anthem, saying in 2018, “Maybe they shouldn’t be in the country.” He also rescinded a White House invitation to the Philadelphia Eagles after it became clear that most of the team’s players didn’t want to go, instead holding a football-free celebration in which he said, “We love our country, we respect our flag, and we always proudly stand for the national anthem.”

Trump’s recent talking points about a protesting white athlete sounded very different. In 2016, Megan Rapinoe followed Kaepernick’s lead in kneeling during the anthem. The following year, her U.S. teammate Becky Sauerbrunn, who is also white, joined Rapinoe in staying in the locker room during the playing of the anthem. Trump did not attack either woman at the time, though he did respond to Rapinoe last month when she appeared in a video saying, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.”

His message, via Twitter, was essentially that protesting is very bad. But Trump still invited Rapinoe and her teammates to the White House, and he never questioned her right to stay in the United States.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/trump-kaepernick-find-another-country-megan-rapinoe.html

[MyOwnPeace]

2. Hope somebody's listening!

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

.....Martin Niemoller