The National Football League announced Wednesday that it will fine teams whose players kneel during the playing of the U.S. national anthem before games, a move forced on it by President Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump used his Twitter account and his platform as President to slam the kneeling protests, which were started in 2016 by one player, Colin Kaepernick, in response to police brutality against American blacks.
It quickly spread to other players and teams around the league, infuriating some NFL fans and winning the approval of others. It might have blown over, had Mr. Trump not politicized it for his own ends.
He denounced the protests as unpatriotic and suggested people boycott the league over them. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,’” he said in a speech in 2017.
The rhetoric suited Mr. Trump, who as an apartment owner in New York City once refused to rent to black people, and who as a politician happily courted white supremacists.
His campaign got under the skin of NFL team owners; one of them called it “divisive” and “horrible.” But in the end the owners’ greatest concern turned out to be the negative publicity coming from the White House, and not the right of players to protest racism even when it displeases the President.
Under the new rules, players can remain in the locker room during the national anthem, but if they are on the field they have to stand or their team will be fined.
It’s a sad, gutless and unnecessary concession to Mr. Trump, who prefers to see critics silenced.
Fittingly, he suffered a blow the same day that the NFL policy came down, when a federal judge ruled that he can’t block followers on Twitter who mock or criticize him. His Twitter feed was deemed an official government account, which means that he violated the free speech rights of those he banned from reading and commenting on his tweets.
This is the President the NFL bowed low to – a divisive and authoritarian man who would no doubt block a lot more speech if he could get away with it.