The entire Dallas Cowboys team including owner Jerry Jones briefly knelt before the national anthem before their Monday night NFL game against the Arizona Cardinals in the final game of a football weekend dominated by attention paid to the protests.
The Cowboys knelt as a team before the anthem began, leading to boos from the crowd, but then stood as the anthem was sung.
The Cardinals, meanwhile, stood locked in arms with current and former military service members in a show of solidarity.
In 2016, Jones said protests during the national anthem were “really disappointing.”
{mosads}“I just feel so strongly that the act of recognizing the flag is a salute to our country and all of the people that have sacrificed so that we can have the liberties we have,” Jones said at the time. “I feel very strongly that everyone should save that moment for the recognition of the flag in a positive way, so I like the way the Cowboys do it.”
Jones, who donated $1 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee, joined several other NFL owners who stood or knelt with their teams this weekend after Trump’s criticism of athletes who don’t stand for the anthem.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He is fired,’ ” Trump said at a rally in Alabama for Senate candidate Sen. Luther Strange (R) on Friday.
Trump’s comments brought a wave of backlash from NFL players, coaches and executives over the weekend, and the White House on Monday sought to defend Trump’s continued tweets aimed at the NFL.
“This isn’t about the president being against anyone,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the daily press briefing. “This is about the president and millions of Americans being for something.”