*You may have noticed that Donald Trump has chilled on his criticism of NFL players’ protest over race relations and social injustice in America.
Trump put his attacks on a timeout last fall, even calling the NFL a “great American company” during a rally in Minnesota. As reported by the LA Times:
People who work in and around the league, as well as current and former administration officials, attribute the truce to a number of factors. Among them: league owners’ capitulation to his demand that they curb on-field player protests, the rebound in TV ratings and, perhaps, Trump’s sense that he’s squeezed all the political juice he can from the issue.
But the decisive event, according to the report (via key insiders) was New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft using Trump influence to secure a trade issue that helped the NFL bring in millions of dollars “from Canadian broadcasting rights to the Super Bowl,” the report states.
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“He was quite happy he could get that problem solved,” said a senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The tension eased after that.”
Per LA Times:
Trump’s ability to deliver a favor for the league’s billionaire owners — a club that shunned him for decades as he sought to buy his own team — gave him an opportunity to declare victory while the NFL hierarchy bowed to his power.
He had failed as an owner in a rival league in the 1980s, and his subsequent attempts to buy a coveted NFL franchise, including the Buffalo Bills in 2014, were consistently rebuffed.
“He has the ultimate consolation prize in that he gets to sort of heckle from the Oval Office,” said Mark Leibovich, author of “Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times.” “He loves wielding power over powerful, wealthy people — especially powerful, wealthy people that have rejected him over four decades.”
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