When ESPN switched from the news of Fernández’s death to the Kaepernick kneeling protests, I was triggered…and soon tweeting. “To all who will kneel during the anthem today—just remember how Jose Fernandez risked his life for the chance to stand for it.” Instant outrage! I was only a candidate for Congress but had already made my first Washington headlines.
“Racist!” proclaimed the woke Left and Twitter blue-checkmark brigade. The PC police had an apprehension in progress. Screw them. I stand by the tweet. Let the first person who calls me a racist sign up to raise a nonwhite immigrant child. The intersection of sports, politics, and race would be my first “Washington controversy.” It would also generate my first prime-time national cable hit.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was being debated in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, and around the same time my frustration with the NFL was growing, as Fox’s Tucker Carlson would soon notice.
Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner, was kneeling at the fifty-yard line during the national anthem, submitting to the cancel culture. The NFL was growing much more comfortable with these overly generalized indictments, ending the days of the NFL representing the most positive, optimistic view of this country. Shahid Khan, owner of the Jaguars, even allowed players to stand for “God Save the Queen” while in London yet kneel for the American Anthem. Did Kahn think that the sun never set on the British empire absent some serious colonization and oppression? America fights for the freedom of others, not always with the Brits throughout history.
Inspired by such outrages—not to mention basic fairness to all taxpayers—I filed an amendment to Trump’s bold tax bill saying the NFL should not get special tax breaks. Tucker Carlson took note and booked me for one question in the final thirty seconds of the show. My amendment was not adopted, but my accountant and friend Steve Riggs texted me to say he was confident that my brief appearance would not be my last. Steve is apparently great at all kinds of projections, not just revenue models.
I still think there are great Americans associated with the NFL, such as Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who donates to both parties—sometimes when he wants things, sometimes just on a whim, but regardless, he had his name on a fundraiser for the Trump campaign, willing to aid the cause even though people started boycotting SoulCycle and other businesses he owns. To his credit, he put out a statement saying he wouldn’t back down—and recently the Dolphins also drafted Tua Tagovailoa, the best quarterback in the region since Marino. So maybe I’ll give the NFL another chance.
Sports increase people’s sense of camaraderie. I got invited to go see the World Series appearance by the Washington Nationals with the president and his family and others, and I remember my mentor, Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, saying to Trump that he had just heard ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed. Meadows opined that Trump would now be less likely to be impeached. This struck me and, I think, the president as flattery, masquerading as unfounded optimism. We might love Trump, but it would be silly to pretend the Democrats ever will.
First Lady Melania Trump, in stark contrast, said the Democrats would now have to impeach her husband just to show that they still have the power to do so. I had said much the same thing during an appearance on Hill.TV, and it struck me that in this instance my cynical view of politics had a bit more in common with the First Lady than with Meadows’s genial hopes.
Luckily, the president understands that power in politics is not an end unto itself unless you’re helping people. His jovial tone, which his supporters sense behind his occasional toughness but his detractors somehow don’t, is born of a hope that ultimately Americans are all on the same team, and if he can lead us to victory, in ways big or small, he’ll be proud of it. He literally wants us all to win, not just to prove he’s the team captain.
Take his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Regardless of how you weigh the risks involved—and few of us can pretend to be certain about all the science behind such estimates, not even the scientists—you should recognize that Trump could have seized the occasion to play dictator if he had wanted to. Instead, most of the criticism he got during the early months of the crisis was for being hands-off, letting different states try different approaches and, as always, listening to some clashing and dissenting voices about how to handle things.
Given how desperate people become for an authoritarian hand during a crisis, he probably could have nationalized businesses—and then insisted that you check in with a host of new bureaucracies in Washington if you want to work, eat, get closer than six feet to your friends or family, or make a doctor’s appointment. But on this occasion, as in the Graham-Cassidy bill that Trump helped craft to repeal and replace Obamacare, his instincts were far removed from those of a dictator or strongman. His first impulse is to get Washington out of the way, devolving power to the states and local communities.
The Trump approach to immigration and trade negotiation, which to liberals and libertarians alike might look like exercises of pure power, are better thought of as motivated by something akin to team spirit. If you don’t want Washington harassing and controlling your people, even less do you want foreign governments and corporations deciding our destiny.
When I visit the wall the president is resolutely building on our porous southern border, when I see the rampant crime—drugs, beheadings, human trafficking—that increasingly spills across the border, I don’t find myself thinking the efforts of the wall-builders and the Border Patrol are aimed at harming another team. Their efforts are aimed, like the president’s, at doing right by
