After a year in which football players across the country dominated headlines by using sports to fuel their misguided politics, with the approval of the overwhelming majority of the sports media.
A member of the sports media has unironically attacked President Trump for using sports to fuel his misguided politics.
Writing in the Daily News, Carron J. Phillips makes the case that Trump has a habit of using the “pain of others” as a “ploy” to push his “racist immigration policies.”
Phillips begins by highlighting Trump’s State of the Union speech where he recognized the family of MS-13 murder victims.
“Last week during his State of the Union address, Trump used grieving parents of color whose children had been killed by the MS-13 gang during his speech as examples of why his ideologies on immigration should be put into action.
“It was another example of how there isn’t a level too low the President will stoop to incite and fire up his base of supporters.”
Why the race of the victim’s family matters, or what that has to do with sports, remains an open question. Though, it’s one that can be dealt with later.
Phillips continues, “And on Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to share his thoughts on Edwin Jackson, a member of the Indianapolis Colts who was killed early Sunday morning by a suspected drunk driver who is in the country illegally.”
Phillips then quotes President Trump’s Tuesday tweets about Jackson:
Phillips continues:
Trump’s next two tweets included a poll from The Daily Caller explaining that seven in 10 Americans support immigration reform and a statement on why the country needs a merit-based immigration system because ‘chain migration and the visa lottery are outdated programs that hurt our economic and national security.’
But here’s the question in all of this.
If Manuel Orrego-Savala, who was a citizen of Guatemala and had been deported in 2007 and 2009, was white and from Norway, would Trump have used Jackson’s death as a springboard to launch this social media rhetoric on immigration?
The answer is no.
How do I know?
Because Colts owner Jim Irsay has a history of driving under the influence of drugs, and Trump has never mentioned him before.
This line of “reasoning” is frankly so embarrassingly stupid that it’s amazing the Daily News allowed it to run.
President Trump couldn’t use Jim Irsay’s well-publicized DUI history as a means to advance his immigration policies, because Jim Irsay is not an illegal immigrant. Thus, Irsay’s example does not in any way prove how Trump would react to Phillips’ hypothetical about an illegal Norwegian drunk driver. Not to mention the fact that President Trump had no policy to advance when Irsay got busted, because Trump was not the president of the United States in 2014, when Irsay got pinched.
As we all know — with the apparent exception of Caron J. Phillips — Barack Obama was president of the United States in 2014.
Which brings us back to Phillips’ selective use of politicians he accuses of using the “pain of others” as a ploy.
In March of 2013, 100 days after the Sandy Hook massacre, President Obama stood in front of a wall of mothers who had lost children to gun violence. Obama’s message that day: “We need everybody to remember how we felt 100 days ago.”
Why was Obama doing this? Because he was trying to push through a package of gun-control bills. In other words, Obama surrounded himself with the pain of others, in hopes of using it to advance a political agenda.
Yet, Carron J. Phillips, and many others, remained silent on this.
In the sports world, President Obama had two members of the Washington Wizards, Bradley Beal and Alan Anderson, stand beside him while he delivered a speech on gun control. The players were connected with the NBA’s partnership with “Everytown for Gun Safety.” A radical anti-2A group that was funded by a radical anti-2A billionaire in Michael Bloomberg.
Isn’t that, “using sports to fuel politics?”
Yet, at the time, such spectacles put on during the Obama Administration were met with either silence, or roaring applause by the sports media. Fast-forward several years, and now that’s all changed. Why? Because the Carron J. Phillips’ of the world have changed their minds about the ethics of using sports to fuel politics? Or, because they no longer approve of the politics and politicians who are doing it?
I think we know the answer.