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AFP
WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT Donald Trump on Sunday urged fans to boycott National Football League games to pressure it to fire or suspend players who kneel in protest during the national anthem, intensifying a battle over politics, social justice and race in America's most popular sport.
In the first NFL game since Trump touched off the spat on Friday with an expletive-laden speech to supporters in Alabama, at least a dozen players on the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonsville Jaguars, playing in London, took a knee on Sunday during the playing of 'The Star-Spangled Banner'.
Others stood and locked arms in a show of solidarity. More protests were expected on Sunday as the rest of the games of week three of the season were played.
It was one of the largest such protests since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who is African American, first began refusing to stand for the anthem in 2016.
The protest spread on Saturday to Major League Baseball for the first time: a black Oakland Athletics catcher named Bruce Maxwell knelt during the anthem before a game in California.
Trump's latest salvo came in an early morning tweet in which he said:"If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag and Country, you will see change take place fast. Fire or suspend!"
"NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back US," the president said.
NFL ratings are in fact down but the decline predates the kneeling-during-the-anthem protests, the New York Times reported.
Among those linking arms with the players was Jacksonville owner Shad Khan, who donated $1 million to Trump's election campaign in 2016.
Khan later issued a statement decrying Trump's recent comments as"divisive and contentious."
"That's why it was important for us, and personally for me, to show the world that even if we may differ at times, we can and should be united in the effort to become better as people and a nation," Khan said.
