Earlier this afternoon, Vice-President Mike Pence took to Twitter to declare that he’d left a game between the Indianapolis Colts and San Francisco 49ers due to witnessing players kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. It was reported that some 49ers players had knelt, something they’ve been doing since the demonstrations began last year to protest racial injustice.

During a segment on CNN after Pence sent out his tweets, senior media correspondent Brian Stelter expressed some cynicism over Pence’s actions, noting that the NFL protest story had faded from the media spotlight over the past couple of weeks and that this could be a way for the Trump administration to push it back to the front of the news cycle.

“The vice president was in Las Vegas yesterday and speaking solemnly about the massacre and flew home to Indiana and spent the night and went to the game today,” he stated. “He’s about to head back to the west coast.”

Stelter explained that it was essentially a guarantee that 49ers players would be kneeling today as several of them have been doing it since the demonstrations began last year.

“His statement almost seems written ahead of time and it seems like it was a staged moment for Pence to walk out and make a statement about this,” the CNN host noted. “But clearly, he feels strongly about these anthem protests. He wanted to express his criticism of them. So maybe he is back watching the game at home.”

After Stelter’s appearance, President Donald Trump appeared to all but confirm this was a staged action by tweeting out that he told Pence to leave the game if he saw any players kneeling.

And adding credence that it was planned for Pence to walk out, the media pool was told to stay outside the stadium in the vans as Pence would be leaving the game early:

The media pool was kept in the vans ahead of the game instead of being led in with VPOTUS. https://t.co/NXIFZCp3fb — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) October 8, 2017

As media pool has been made aware, a staffer told pool that VPOTUS may depart the game early. Did not indicate how early. https://t.co/G1f2WljJAW — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) October 8, 2017

Watch the clip above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona

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