What Went Down During President Trump’s Closing Speech At The RNC

The RNC just played a video to “honor the American athlete.” It’ll be interesting to see if Trump addresses the player strike that started yesterday in several leagues and is continuing today. Leagues like the NFL and the NBA have had a pretty fraught relationship with the president. Back in 2016, while campaigning for the Republican nomination, Trump openly criticized Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem. Then in 2017, he infamously called other NFL players who knelt during the anthem a “son of a bitch” who should be fired from the league. Around that same time, Trump rescinded his invitation to the NBA champions, the Golden State Warriors, to visit the White House after Warriors players including Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant told media they didn’t want to go. Following that incident, NBA star LeBron James called the president a “bum.” There are plenty more examples, but all that’s to say the president has never been shy about sharing his thoughts on social justice movements in sports and among athletes, whether that’s through a tweet or during a speech. Will he continue that practice tonight?

We’ve seen several sports folks during this RNC, but notably no basketball players. The NBA and WNBA did not play yesterday or today, instead striking for racial justice in response to the unrest in Kenosha. By contrast, last week during the DNC, we had a video appearance by Steph Curry and his family.

Dana White, president of the UFC, says, “No one person could have predicted the obstacles that COVID would bring,” but that Trump did the best he could to address them. This seems like a consistent message we will get tonight, and it’s probably the least bad of Trump’s options for addressing the pandemic.