That Time Donald Trump Said a President ‘Should Not Be Telling’ NFL Team What to Do – Back in 2013

Four years later, President Trump is telling NFL teams to fire players who protest during national anthem

There really is a Donald Trump tweet for everything, isn’t there?

In 2013, Donald Trump tweeted that then-president Barack Obama “should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name” because the country “has far bigger problems.”

He implored Obama to focus on those bigger problems, “not nonsense.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/387565483303923712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2017%2F09%2F25%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-nfl-tweet-four-years-ago-trnd%2Findex.html

Of course, now that Trump is president, he has spent the last weekend imploring NFL teams to fire or suspend players who choose to kneel in protest during the national anthem, tweeting on Sunday that the “NFL should change policy.”

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b-tch off the field right now. He is fired,’” Trump said Friday at a rally in Alabama. 

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/912080538755846144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2017%2F09%2F25%2Fpolitics%2Ftrump-nfl-tweet-four-years-ago-trnd%2Findex.html

Trump’s comments over the weekend spurred intense backlash from across the NFL, causing protests to be even more prevalent than before.

Several teams opted to stay in their locker room during the anthem, and many players kneeled or locked arms in solidarity during the anthem in a gesture that originated last season to protest the treatment of African Americans.

Back in 2013, Trump was referencing Obama’s own remarks in an interview that he would change the name of the Washington Redskins if it were up to him because the name is considered offensive to many Native Americans.

“I don’t know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real, legitimate concerns that people have about these things,” Obama said at the time.

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