It isn’t often that a backup quarterback leads his team to their first Super Bowl victory and simultaneously wins the MVP award for the game. But that’s what Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Nick Foles did this year, after a season-ending injury to the team’s first-team quarterback, Carson Wentz. The City of Brotherly Love, well-known for its gentle and modest fan base, went absolutely wild after the Birds’ astonishing victory in one of the most exciting championship games ever played, besting the perennially dominant New England Patriots.
It is beyond tradition for a United States President to receive the winning Super Bowl team to celebrate their victory. But this year, because some of the best players on the team chose to use their public status as a vehicle for drawing attention to the epidemic of police violence against African-Americans in this country, the current Racist- in-Chief chose instead to snub the entire team, disinviting them from the traditional recognition that is their due. In doing so, he made an implicit statement against African-Americans throughout the country, which was no doubt his intent, since he owes his election to ginning up racism between Americans:
Less than 24 hours before President Donald Trump was to welcome the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles to the White House, he rescinded the invitation Monday evening.
Singling out the Super Bowl Champions’ commitment to racial justice, Trump explicitly attacked their patriotism for doing so:
"The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow," Trump wrote in a statement. "They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”
None of the Philadelphia Eagles actually “took a knee" during the entire 2017 season. But the draft-evading Trump, who has disgraced the Presidency more than any President in living memory, penned a petty and juvenile reason for his actions based on the team’s supposed “anti-American” actions of staying in the locker room during the national anthem to memorialize those who were targeted by for violence and abuse by law enforcement simply for the color of their skin:
"The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow," Trump wrote in a statement. "They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”
Only a person with a petulant and pathetic ego such as Trump would stoop to such pettiness, a fact not lost on the team’s wide receiver, Torrey Smith, and others who characterized Trump’s bitter action as that of a wholesale coward:
"There are a lot of people on the team that have plenty of different views," Smith wrote in a tweet. "The men and women that wanted to go should’ve been able to go. It’s a cowardly act to cancel the celebration because the majority of the people don’t want to see you. To make it about the anthem is foolish"
But this is just par for the course for the small man we are forced to endure in the White House.
The Eagles regular season begins on September 6, 2018. Pennsylvanians will ensure that the end of Trump’s season starts on Election Day, exactly two months later.