Eagles owner reportedly goes off - 'No interest in supporting President Trump'
The Philadelphia Eagles feature one of the most socially active and outspoken rosters in the NFL.
Safety Malcolm Jenkins has been vocal on the issue of racial injustice and raised his fist in protest for the majority of the season. Defensive end Chris Long has been particularly active after the events that took place in his college town of Charlottesville, Virginia. The Eagles also traded for Michael Bennett, who sat and protested during the national anthem for the majority of the season when he was a Seattle Seahawk.
The Eagles essentially exemplified the anthem protesting that President Donald Trump lambasted at a rally in September.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b—- off the field right now, he’s fired!’?” Trump said about NFL anthem protesters at the rally.
He added that an owner who cut an anthem protester “would be the most popular person in this country. Because that’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect for everything we stand for.”
So when the Eagles stunned the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, many immediately began anticipating how the team would handle the traditional Super Bowl champions visit to the White House. After all, Trump was in a similar spat with the NBA champion Golden State Warriors and ultimately rescinded an invite.
Based on a New York Times report about how Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie feels about Trump, another rescinded invitation could be on the horizon.
Per the report, Lurie was set off at a private NFL meeting when a player claimed it was difficult to trust any owners because they all supported Trump.
“Another fact I want to throw out there: Many of us have no interest in supporting President Trump,” Lurie said, according to an unpublished recording of the meeting obtained by The Times.
Lurie then acknowledged that some owners do, in fact, support the president.
“Yes, there are some,” he said. “There are some players who do, too.”
From there, Lurie took one more brazen shot at the current presidential administration.
“But this is not where you brandish a group of people because they own assets in a sport we love, supporting what many of us perceive as, you know, one disastrous presidency,” Lurie said. He reportedly used an unidentified vulgarity to emphasize the word “disastrous.”
It makes sense.
For the Eagles to be as outspoken as they’ve been, they had to get approval, tacit or otherwise, from the man signing their checks.
Of note, despite the report, the White House and the team are still engaged in talks to have a visit.
“We have been in conversations with the Eagles about timing and are working with them to make it happen,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The Times. “We hope to have something finalized in the next couple of weeks.”
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