President Donald Trump began his West Virginia campaign rally by criticizing the ESPN network for its decision not to air the national anthem while broadcasting football games in the coming season.
“You are proud of our country, and unlike the NFL, you always honor and cherish our great American flag,” Trump said after pleasantries, continuing that it was “just announced by ESPN … rather than defending our anthem, our beautiful, beautiful national anthem, and defending our flag, they decided that they just won’t broadcast when they play the national anthem.”
ESPN announced its national anthem policy Friday, saying “we generally have not broadcasted the anthem and I don’t think there’s going to be any change this year. Our plan going into this year is to not broadcast the anthem.”
ESPN lamented that it is viewed as a political organization saying “we are a sports media company. We are always going to cover the intersection between sports and politics.”