Nearly half of Americans disapprove of NFL player protests against the national anthem, but even more don’t like the way President Trump has reacted to them, according to a new poll.
Forty-eight percent of those polled said they believe it’s inappropriate for NFL players to publicly protest through kneeling during the national anthem at games. However, 57 percent of those polled, regardless of whether they supported the protests or not, said they disapprove of the president’s reaction — including his tweets and calls for players who kneeled to be fired. Only a little over one-third of those polled agreed with President Trump’s reaction, respondents said in the HuffPost/YouGov poll.
Of those who found the protests inappropriate, 76 percent believed the NFL players should protest in their private lives, while 13 percent said they should not protest at all.
Twelve percent of those polled believed the protests were intended to be against the American flag. Forty-eight percent believed the players were protesting police violence, and 40 percent believed they were protesting Trump.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 interviews conducted on Sept. 25-26 among U.S. adults, using a sample from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to align with the demographics of the adult U.S. population. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percent.
