President Donald Trump predicted he would prevail in his fight with the NFL to force players to stand during the national anthem, in a Thursday night interview that aired Friday on “Fox & Friends.”
“We are going to win. I don’t know what the NFL is doing. Honestly, I don’t know what the NFL is doing,” Trump said, adding “from what I understand it’s in contracts that you have to stand for the national anthem. In fact, they have something where it says you will stand, you will have the helmet on the ground and the hand on the heart.”
The president continued “I don’t know why they’re not enforcing it. And in cases where they don’t have it, you know they had a new thing where, they don’t have to do that, you don’t have to kneel, you can go back into the locker room. I think that’s worse than kneeling in a certain way.”
Trump has long advocated for a mandatory NFL policy which requires players to stand for the national anthem after some decided to kneel to protest police violence against black Americans. The issue has surfaced once again after Nike picked Colin Kaepernick — who started the kneeling — and the NFL season is restarting.