Don Salcedo
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
NFL players only started coming on eld for the National Anthem in 2009. The reason: The government paid them to stage patriotic displays to boost military recruitment.
"Until 2009, no NFL player stood for the National Anthem because players actually stayed in the locker room as the anthem played," ESPN's Stephen A. Smith explained in 2016. "The players were moved to the eld during the National Anthem because it was seen as a marketing strategy to make the athletes look more patriotic. The United States Department of Defense paid the National Football League $5.4 million between 2011 and 2014, and the National Guard $6.7 million between 2013 and 2015 to stage on-eld patriotic ceremonies as part of military recruitment budget line items."
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy later conrmed that players did not appear on eld for the anthem until 2009, and Smith's claim was checked by an ESPN researcher.
Urging players to appear oneld during the National Anthem is just one example of "paid patriotism," a practice tackled by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake in 2015. A joint report issued by the senators goes into even further detail about how the DOD nanced displays of patriotism with taxpayer dollars."
In my opinion, Trump was wrong to denigrate the black NFL players who demonstrated their protest about white police ofcers not being held accountable for shooting and killing black children in the United States.
Today approximately 40 percent of the military personnel in the United States are minority. During the Vietnam War, the majority of the troops were minorities, and the largest minority group ghting in Vietnam were Mexican-Americans and Hispanics. Today many of the lily white veteran organizations in the United States act like the veteran organizations right after World War II acted by denying Mexican American veterans and blacks membership in their organizations.
I believe that if you are a veteran and you still support Trump after all the things he has said and done over the last several years, you do so only because you are racist. Trump used his wealth and position to get out of serving in Vietnam not once or twice but a number of times. I guess those bone spurs can be a real problem.