How Sarah Sanders deflected on answering for Donald Trump’s NFL comments

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders described President Donald Trump’s racist tirade from Friday night against black NFL players as “appropriate” during Monday’s White House press briefing.

When asked if Trump went too far in describing protesting players as “sons of a bitches,” Sanders deflected.

“I think that it’s always appropriate for the President of the United States to defend our flag and the national anthem and the men and women who fought and died to defend it,” she said.

Asked multiple times about the president’s comments during the press briefing, Sanders continued to go back to her original talking point. Trump’s rant about protests and other sports-related topics on Friday started a weekend-long tweetstorm in which the president commented on NBA athletes, an NHL visit to the White House, and, eventually, the behavior of NASCAR drivers. The president has pointed to hockey and racing as more appropriate venues and people who respected the flag and anthem compared to the other leagues.

Sanders linking Trump’s strong words to defending the flag and the anthem was at best an inappropriate conflation and, at worst, a deliberate deflection showing Sanders’ complicity in his statements.

During the briefing Sanders was asked if the president thought the people who kneeled over the weekend were “very fine people,” a callback to his comments following the events in Charlottesville that led to the murder of a nonviolent counter-protestor by a white supremacist. Sanders said the issues weren’t similar.

“I think you are trying to conflate different things here. Look, we certainly respect the rights that people have but we also need to focus. This isn’t about the president being against something, which everybody wants to draw,” she said.

“This is about the president being for something. This is about the president being for respecting our country through symbols like the American flag, like the national anthem, and the hundreds of thousands of people that actually stand instead of the few hundred that may have knelt.”

During the events of the weekend when the president said he preferred people linking arms in “unity” compared to kneeling in protest, questions also swirled about the lack of conversation from the White House centered around global issues, and why the president seemed intent on focusing on the sports world.

With devastation coming to Puerto Rico from natural disasters, an ongoing spat with North Korea looming, Republican health-care legislation in Congress, and more bubbling around Washington, the president appeared unfocused since he was giving plenty of oxygen to sports-related topics.

Sanders believed people asking that are mistaken.

“He’s not emphasizing sports. You’re missing the entire purpose of the message,” she said. “He’s emphasizing something that should be unifying. Celebrating and promoting patriotism in our country is something that should bring everyone together.”

Sanders said that the focus of protests against police brutality have since lost their touch from when the originals started.

“I think if the debate is really, for them, about police brutality, they should probably protest the officers on the field that are protecting them instead of the American flag,” she said.

A reporter asked for clarification.

“Are you encouraging NFL players to protest police?”

“No, no, no. That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “I was kind of pointing out the hypocrisy of the fact that if the goal is and the message is that of police brutality, which they’ve stated, that that doesn’t seem very appropriate to protest the American flag.

“I’m not sure how those two things would be combined,” she said.

Another reporter asked how the president can focus on the legislative agenda if he’s busy tweeting about protests.

“It really doesn’t take that long to type out 140 characters,” Sanders said. “This president is very capable of doing more than one thing at a time and more than one thing in a day.”

In the ways that Sanders doesn’t admit there’s an issue, she’s also embracing her bosses’ ideals and emboldening their base. Is this taking away from Trump doing his presidential duties by bashing black players and starting a culture war?

“No, I don’t,” Sanders said when asked if Trump’s consistent tweeting was lessening his attention on the agenda. “I think it’s important for a president to show patriotism, to be a leader on this issue and he has.”

To the informed, eye Trump was attacking the black stars of the sports world, Steph Curry, et al. Sanders and the White House have doubled down on his racist rhetoric, attempting to inform the public that the president wasn’t passing off bigotry with his words.

“The president isn’t talking about race,” she said. “The president is talking about pride in our country. What you saw yesterday was players and fans of all races joining together as Americans to honor our service members. That’s what the president is talking about. That’s what his focus is on.”

Sanders said that Trump “isn’t being against anyone.” She confirmed his strong views on the topics. But before leaving, Sanders said that the president was still focused on doing his job and that this was nothing but pride in his country. Really, this was nothing more than a distraction. This was nothing more than what Trump wanted.

“You act like that’s all he did this weekend.”