WASHINGTON—A right-wing website teed up U.S. President Donald Trump to boast about beating the NFL into submission with his scathing criticism of the league’s approach to players who kneeled during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality.

He didn’t seize the opportunity.

“No, I don’t want to take credit for that,” he told the Daily Caller on Wednesday. “You know I get along very well with the NFL. I helped them in Canada, you know that story where they were having a dispute for many years with Canada.”

Trump continued: “In fact, Commissioner (Roger) Goodell called me and he thanked me. You know, they were working on that thing for years. It was having to do with the advertisements for the Super Bowl, it was a long-term problem and I got it solved.”

After a year of verbal attacks, Trump has gotten noticeably warmer toward the NFL since late September. At least part of the reason, it appears, is a Canadian policy change in the new NAFTA — and the grateful phone call Trump says he received about it from Goodell, which the praise-minded president has delighted in recounting.

The revised trade agreement rescinds a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission decision that banned “simultaneous substitution” of television advertisements during the Super Bowl. The CRTC ban meant that, as of the 2017 Super Bowl, Canadians were able to watch high-budget American ads that had previously been replaced by Canadian ads on the American channels showing the game.

Canadian channels show the game at the same time. The NFL wanted the ban lifted because it can make more money selling Canadian rights to the game if the ratings on those channels are high. The ratings on Canadian channels owned by rights-holder Bell Media have fallen sharply since the American ads have been available to Canadians on the American channels.

Canadians will still be able to see American ads Sunday if they tune into CBS. The trade deal has not come into effect, and the CRTC dismissed a Bell request to suspend the ban.

Canadians can also watch the game between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams on CTV, CTV2 and TSN.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a friend of Trump, had called him to urge him to get the ad issue addressed in the NAFTA talks.

“He was quite happy he could get that problem solved,” a White House official told the Times. “The tension eased after that.”

The tension appears eased, specifically, after the apparent phone call to Trump from Goodell. (The NFL did not respond to a request for comment.) Trump has taken pleasure in telling audiences about the thanks he says he received from a man he used to denounce.

In 2017, Trump seized on the anthem controversy and heaped criticism upon the NFL, tweeting in Oct. 2017: “No leadership in NFL!” In the Wednesday interview, he called the NFL a “great American company.”

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It is not clear what role Trump played in the negotiations over the dispute. A Canadian government source said they were not aware of Trump discussing it directly with Canadian officials. The president has repeatedly claimed he was personally responsible for the resolution.

“It took me about two seconds,” he said in an October 2018 speech. “I settled that for the NFL,” he said in an interview that month.

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