Yahoo! Sports writer Jay Busbee took issue with a recent tweet from President Trump in which Trump both supported military veterans and families and took a shot at NFL anthem protesters.
However, Busbee took criticism for his recent anti-Trump article when it appeared that he was speaking for all veterans.
Busbee, whose bio doesn’t mention any military service, took issue with the president’s recent tweet of a photo of a military wife mourning her deceased soldier husband. Trump also chided the millionaire NFL players who continue to refuse to stand at attention for the playing of the national anthem.
“So beautiful,” Trump tweeted on January 4. “Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel,” the president wrote of the photo of a wife mourning at a gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery.
Along with his comment, Trump retweeted an image from September that showed support for the military.
The president’s tweet, though, incensed Busbee, who wrote a January 4 attack on Trump calling the original photo a “months-old meme” and regurgitating the arguments made by dozens of other sports writers that the NFL protests weren’t against the flag, the country, or our soldiers.
But Busbee’s screed didn’t sit well with Smoke Room’s Jena Greene, who started out criticizing the Yahoo writer by questioning whether the meme being “months-old” was even a valid criticism. Greene slammed Busbee for seeming to dismiss the military wife meme noting that the age of a good point doesn’t “destroy credibility.”
“Somebody tell this guy that photos don’t lose meaning just because they’re a little old,” Greene wrote.
Greene also slammed Busbee for assuming he has the moral authority to speak for veterans.
At one point in his editorial, Busbee writes, “Leaving aside the question of whether it’s appropriate to use a military widow’s grief purely for scoring political points.” But Greene wondered how Busbee felt he could speak for veterans.
“The last time I checked, Yahoo! Sports writers were not in charge of veterans,” Greene wrote. “They don’t serve veterans, and most of them sit in cozy offices sipping lattes and can’t remember the last time they thanked a veteran. Two entities are allowed to speak for veterans: the commander In Chief and veterans themselves. Donald Trump happens to be one of those things.”
Still, Busbee’s main point is that Trump is wrong to criticize the NFL for its protests saying that the players weren’t protesting the flag, the nation, or our soldiers.
“Protesting players have spoken at length about how their protests aren’t meant to dishonor the military,” Busbee wrote, “but rather to raise awareness of systemic racial inequality and police brutality.”
But the demonstrations were much more than that, according to the creator of the national anthem protest.
Colin Kaepernick himself said that his protest was against the flag and the very same country our soldiers have fought and died to protect.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said in August of 2016. “To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Clearly, Kaepernick was standing against the country and not just campaigning for equal rights.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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