White House Press Secretary/bewitched doorknob Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday defended Donald Trump’s asinine and racist comments in which he said that any football player who takes a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racism is a “son of a bitch” who should be fired.
“This is about the president and millions of Americans being for something, being for honoring our flag, honoring our national anthem, and honoring the men and women who fought to defend it,” she said, conveniently sidestepping a question about Trump’s vulgar “son of a bitch” comment.
As reporters continued to demand answers about Trump’s response to the NFL, and specifically to free agent Colin Kaepernick, who was shunned after he began kneeling during the National Anthem last year to protest police brutality, Sanders flat-out denied that racism played any role in the protest or Trump’s comments. Here’s the exchange that followed:
Reporter: “Sarah, when Colin Kaepernick says that his protest is about fighting police brutality, fighting racial disparity, racial injustice, you’re not taking him at his word. You’re saying the focus has long since moved on. But when white supremacists say that their protest is about heritage and not hate, the President does take them at their word. So why is there this disparity about who gets to decide what protest is about?”
Sanders: “I think if the debate is really, for them, about police brutality, they should probably protest the officers on the field that are protecting them instead of the American flag.”
In a follow-up to that dim-witted response, another reporter asked, “Are you encouraging NFL players to protest police?”
“No, no, that’s not what I’m saying,” Sanders responded. “I was kind of pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact that if the goal is and the message is that of police brutality, which they’ve stated, that that doesn’t seem very appropriate to protest the American flag. I’m not sure how those two things would be combined.”
