BREAKING: Obama Issues Statement About the Anthem

BREAKING: Obama Issues Statement About the Anthem
October 1, 2017
https://www.conservativeinstitute.org/political-corruption/obama-statement-about-anthem.htm?bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiAiZWY0MGMwZDctYmU0Ni00YjlhLThhNGUtZWNlOTA1ODUyOTJjIn0%3D&utm_campaign=dynamic_campaign&utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=automated
BREAKING: Obama Issues Statement About the Anthem
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Does Barack Obama ever listen to himself speak?

While giving a $400,000 speech to a brokerage firm, Obama appeared to take a swipe at his successor last week over the NFL’s national anthem controversy.

Ironically, he complained that President Donald Trump couldn’t leave politics out of professional football — but failed to condemn the players who introduced politics into the NFL in the first place.

Politics bigger issue than health care?
At the close of an address at a health care conference sponsored by brokerage firm Cantor-Fitzgerald, for which he commanded a Clinton-esque $400,000 speaking fee, he veered away from his prepared remarks on health care issues to hit the NFL controversy. Apparently health care is a minor issue compared to politics.

“Our big problem right now is politics,” he said. “Can’t even get it out of football!”

On its face, this remark sounds to have been directed at the players who take a knee or sit out “The Star Spangled Banner” at the opening of each game for perceived wrongs in American society. But it soon became apparent that his target was Trump.

Trump reacts, Obama objects
The practice of taking a knee during the anthem began with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick at the start of the 2016 season and steadily gained steam. It got a huge shot in the arm after Trump blasted the practice at a Mobile, Ala. political rally last week.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b—- off the field right now?” he asked.

Since then, the president has keep the pressure up on Twitter, as well as his remarks to the press. That’s the politicizing Obama objected to.

“There are gonna be a lot of folks who do stuff we don’t agree with … but as long as they’re doing it within the law, then we can voice our opinion objecting to it, but it’s also their right,” Obama said.

Oddly, although Obama has generally steered clear of the “repeal and replace” debate of his signature health care plan, he chose to hang his hat on this particular issue to blast Trump.

“This is a big system, and it’s complicated, but what to do that would make it better is actually not that mysterious,” Obama said. “But it does require putting ideology aside.”

The flaws in Obama’s argument
Although Americans have a First Amendment right to freely express their beliefs, that right doesn’t extend to the workplace.

In the case of the NFL, all employees — including players — have to conform to a personal conduct policy that the league updated in 2014. It prohibits any conduct that, among other things, “undercuts public respect and support for the NFL.”

This would appear to include disrespecting the flag and those who fought and lost their lives for it.

Citing this policy, the league has refused requests to make political statements in the past, including:

The display of cleats honoring the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack;
The display of decals commemorating the five Dallas police officers killed in a sniper attack; and,
A request by a player to wear pink socks to honor his mother, who lost her life to breast cancer.
The NFL denied all these requests as being political in nature. Ironically, it had little to say about one player’s decision to wear “cops are pigs” socks.

That player was Colin Kaepernick – the same man that started the national anthem protest in the first place.

Who’s playing politics here? The president or the NFL?