Trump Takes A Knee…No White House Visit For Eagles
President Donald Trump’s war or words with the NFL has been well chronicled throughout the media including the Whiskey Congress Podcast. President Trump has had a confrontational relationship with the NFL dating back to his days with the long since defunct USFL (Trump owned the New Jersey Generals Franchise at the time of the USFL’s demise). When the Buffalo Bills were on the open market, Donald Trump briefly entered the ring as a potential owner. Trump dropped out of the pool of potential owners before having to disclose his financial status. I’m not saying he dropped out because he is not worth nearly as much as he likes to represent, but the timing adds up. Now that Trump resides in the White House, he was expected to host the NFL Champion Philadelphia Eagles. Several Eagles players made it clear that they had no intention of joining their teammates when they visit the White House. The President’s aggressive response to the anthem protests including his choice to misrepresent the real issue that motivated Colin Kaepernick (and others) to kneel during the anthem are among the reasons that Eagles’ stars Chris Long and Malcolm Jenkins planned to skip the visit. Before the President could face potential embarrassment due to lack of attendance, the White House cancelled the scheduled visit by the Superbowl Champions. I am not saying that’s why the visit was cancelled, but the timing adds up.
Here we go again.
The Philadelphia Eagles were scheduled to visit the White House Tuesday afternoon for the customary victory lap granted each year’s Super Bowl victor. It would have all the light-hearted pomp and circumstance that champion visits to the executive mansion always have: a stiff photo op on the South Lawn, some cordial pun-slinging by the commander in chief, the brandishing of a team jersey customized with the president’s name. Tuesday’s visit was going to be by a depleted group, even by the “Won’t be able to make it” standards of the last 15 months, with many members of the outspokenly political team—among them Malcolm Jenkins and Chris Long—making clear they had no intention of sharing a celebratory stage with Donald Trump. “[When] my son grows up, and I believe the legacy of our president is going to be what it is,” Long said in 2017, “I don’t want him to say, ‘Hey Dad, why’d you go [to the White House] when you knew the right thing was to not go?”
