Meme Culture: Trump v. NFL Kneeling

For my meme culture presentation I chose the current event of the protesting NFL players that have been kneeling during the national anthem and Trump’s responses to the issue. For more context the major of the players protesting are African American as they are mainly protesting the many cases of police brutality towards other African Americans. Of course people around the country have differing opinions on the issue and whether it is right to kneel during the anthem, as one view is that such an action is disrespectful to the veterans and soldiers that fight for the freedom of those players to begin with. Others agree with the player's’ right to protest the police brutality and believe it is not disrespectful to soldiers.

But of course the opinion of interest that created a lot of drama on all media was that of Donald Trump, who believed every player in question should be banned from playing. He even went further to call them “sons of bitches” because they are disrespecting the veterans and soldiers. He believes disrespecting the national anthem is a crime itself.

Many news sites chose to leave out the fact that he called them “sons of bitches” as they supported Trump’s belief that nobody should disrespect the anthem. Of course the opposing viewpoint strongly emphasized his use of “sons of bitches” and compared it to his statement a couple weeks earlier about how the white nationalists protesting are “very fine people.” Clearly there’s a case of leaving out information or giving extra details to further a certain viewpoint. The memes I found centered on Trump’s descriptions of the white nationalists versus the NFL protesters. In my findings I did not encounter anything highly sensationalist, but just simply choosing to show Trump called them “sons of bitches” or leaving it out. Of course some reports focused on Trump’s support of white nationalists versus the hate towards the black athletes to further comment on Trump’s racism as a whole.

Overall it was interesting to see how truthful each report was and how much detail was put into Trump’s opinions. Each journalist/reporter has the power to decide how to tell a story and through what was emphasized or left out, one could easily pick up on what the journalist/reporter wanted the reader to think. Only a few sites reported on both opinions and tried to present the issue objectively.