President Donald Trump has had few good things going for him of late. Repealing Obamacare looks to once again be like the football that Lucy pulls away from Charlie Brown, and as if that weren't bad enough, it turns out Jared Kushner used his private e-mail to conduct government business. Now, I don't remember much about the 2016 election, what with the extensive and expensive Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind procedures I've been undergoing, but I seem to remember that some people had issues with a certain Democratic candidate for president doing exactly that same thing. So if Donald Trump had one good thing going for him, it might have been the ongoing culture war that was tearing apart the NFL.

Let me be clear, the debate over people protesting the national anthem is in no way good for America. It's beyond dumb and serves as little more than a proxy battle between people who want to stand up for those who don't have a voice and those to whom loyalty to a flag and a song is more important than a militarized law-enforcement apparatus that unfairly targets people of color. It's served as a flashpoint for many of Trump's supporters against the so-called "social-justice warrior" left. They've rallied to the argument of "how dare these millionaires whine," even though the president they support is a rich man who is constantly claiming that he is aggrieved. But rather than just allowing the debate to play out, Trump decided he needed to dive into the middle of it. Why? Well, because he was giving a campaign speech in Alabama, and a great way to get a good response from a group of supporters whom you've encouraged to give in to their racist impulses is to randomly bring up Colin Kaepernick and NFL players protesting the national anthem. Also because he's a narcissist who can't handle not being the center of attention at all times.

But then a funny thing happened. It turned out Trump's comments at the rally ("Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!"), aside from being awful and wrong-headed, were also a giant tactical mistake. They didn't lead to fewer player protests, they led to an explosion of protests from players. And they also led to people who were otherwise on Trump's side to turn on him for crossing the line. Take Rex Ryan. Ryan, the former Jets and Bills coach, was a vocal Trump supporter...until this:

Obviously that's nuts. Trump has encouraged anti-Muslim sentiments, called Mexicans rapists, repeatedly told the LGBT community to fuck off, and supported his justice department's plans to pursue a racist policing style, yet only now that Trump has insulted NFL players has Rex had enough. It's a bad look for Rex, and Randy Moss's face in that clip is the perfect encapsulation of how I feel about Rex. But this is also indicative of just how bad this might be for Donald Trump. When all of a sudden even NFL Republicans are turning on Trump, you know things have gotten bad. If it weren't for the fact that it's repugnant, there's almost some comfort to take here. President Trump is too simplistic and narcissistic and unhinged to get out of his own way.

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