Dave Zirin destroys Trump’s claim that the idea of teams listening respectfully to the national anthem and respecting the flag is a long and hallowed tradition.
Oh, Amy, playing the national anthem and having the teams line up before games, it has a long and hallowed history that goes back to the days of Jersey Shore and Justin Bieber. I mean, we’re talking 2009. I mean, Fast & Furious 4 came out in 2009. That’s how long players have lined up for the anthem. And, yes, it comes out of a partnership between the Department of Defense and the National Football League. Everything you see at games, for years, until it was uncovered by Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona, everything you saw for years, like—
AMY GOODMAN: And John McCain, right?
DAVE ZIRIN: And John McCain, yes. And showing it in like—showing like the salute to the troop moment and all of these spectacles, they really were about recruitment for the armed forces, and they pay tens of millions of dollars to the National Football League to do these kinds of events, which speaks to, I think, this partnership that exists and how patriotism exists in these events. This is not some long tradition. I mean, this is something that’s a very short tradition and one that was absolutely geared with post-9/11 war-on-terror concern about the recruitment levels for the armed forces and seeing the NFL as a way to shore up those numbers, and paying billionaires money to make this a reality. And, yes, this was only—this was something also that was hidden. It was discovered by the investigation of those Arizona senators. And I think that sort of gives the game away as far as what all this is about. I mean, Trump speaks about it as if it is this kind of long, hallowed tradition of players standing at attention for the anthem, when it’s actually something very recent and very, I think, just monetary, in terms of the NFL’s perspective.
