Spectators and fans of the Miami Dolphins will no longer see any of the team’s players taking a knee during the national anthem, the team’s owner said.
“All of our players will be standing,” Stephen Ross, a real estate developer, told the New York Daily News during an event Monday, where he was presented the Jackie Robinson Foundation’s Robie Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Initially, I totally supported the players in what they were doing. It’s America and people should be able to really speak their choices,” Ross continued.
But the Dolphins owner said he reconsidered his support for kneeling during the national anthem after he felt the conversation shifted from protesting racial injustice and police brutality to protesting “support of our country or the military.”
Part of that shift, Ross said, was attributed to President Trump, who sparred with the NFL and players on Twitter and suggested those taking a knee were disrespecting the military and the American flag.
Trump called for players who kneeled when “The Star Spangled Banner” played to be fired.
NFL team owners considered last year adopting a new rule requiring players to stand during the national anthem, but ultimately decided against doing so. Trump slammed that decision, saying the league was showing “total disrespect for our great country.”
“When that message changed, and everybody was interpreting it as that was the reason, then I was against kneeling,” Ross said. “I like Donald. I don’t support everything that he says. Overall, I think he was trying to make a point, and his message became what kneeling was all about. From that standpoint, that is the way the public is interpreting it. So I think that’s really incumbent upon us to adopt that. That’s how, I think, the country is interpreting the kneeling issue.”
Ross said in October he believed Trump shifted the conversation surrounding the national anthem protests and wished players wouldn’t kneel. Dolphins coach Adam Gase then implemented a new policy requiring Dolphins players to stand.
Players who don’t want to stand are required to remain in the locker room or the tunnel rather than taking the field.
“He’s changed that whole paradigm of what protest is,” Ross said last year. “And I think it’s incumbent upon the players today, because of how the public is looking at it, to really stand and really salute the flag.”
