President Donald Trump said his efforts in passing criminal-justice reform have elicited phone calls from NFL players who have thanked him for his commitment.
“President Obama tried. They all tried. Everybody wanted to do it ... a lot of people in the NFL have been calling and thanking me for it,” Trump said. “They have been calling and thanking, you know, that people have been trying to get that taken care of. It’s now signed into law and affects tremendous numbers of people, and very good people.”
Trump also addressed the controversy surrounding NFL players who kneeled during the National Anthem—begun by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who said it was to protest “police brutality” and “racial injustice.”
“A lot of [the protest] is having to do with reform, from what I understand,” he said. “Whether it’s criminal justice or whatever, it may be and they have different versions and everybody seemed to have a different version of it. But a lot of it had to do with that, and I took care of that.”
The act, co-sponsored by more than a third of the Senate, received evenly balanced support among both Democrats and Republicans. It aims to make the federal criminal-justice system fairer, reduce overcrowding in prisons, and save taxpayer dollars. Certain mandatory minimum sentences also were adjusted.Kaepernick sat on a bench during the playing of the National Anthem in August 2016, but after he faced widespread criticism from fans nationwide, he began to kneel during the anthem as a statement of protest. He never again stood during the national anthem. The quarterback opted out of his contract with the 49ers in 2017, and no team has hired him since.
“I think that people have to, at all times, respect our flag and at all times respect our national anthem and our country,” Trump said. “And I think there are plenty of places and times you can protest and you can do a lot. But you can’t do that. That’s my opinion.”
The president also emphasized what he has done for the African-American community in reducing unemployment, pointing out the “best numbers they’ve had—literally the best numbers they’ve had in history.”The judicial-reform bill, years in the making, represents an easing of tough law-and-order minimal sentencing requirements imposed on judges that stemmed from a 1980s drive to clamp down on an epidemic of crack cocaine and other illegal drug use in the United States. It comes after efforts from liberal and conservative advocacy groups as well as civil-rights advocates.