Kayleigh McEnany: The President ‘Is Not a Fan of the Kneeling Movement’

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday that the president continued to oppose the movement that began with kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism.

The president is very much against kneeling in general. The president has made clear for years that kneeling is tied to our national anthem, that it does not respect our military men and women across the country, and he is not a fan of the kneeling movement, and he has made that very clear..

In recent days, police officers and local officials in major cities have taken a knee during protests over the death of George Floyd to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. House Democrats on Monday, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), took a knee while the cameras were running and remained silent for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

McEnany revisited the topic after a CNN reporter asked if the president still believed that an NFL football player should be fired if he knelt during the national anthem.

McEnany said that Trump viewed the kneeling protest as “disrespectful” to the United States military and said he had recently made his views clear on Twitter.

“NO KNEELING!” Trump wrote in all-caps on Friday about the importance of standing during the national anthem. “We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag.”

McEnany said she did not have an update about whether the president still believed that kneeling football players should be fired.