WASHINGTON — Embroiled in a debate about the right to free expression among professional athletes, President Trump got the backing of his chief law enforcement officer at an unusual venue Tuesday.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, while offering strong support for free expression on college campuses during an address at Georgetown University's Center for the Constitution, joined Trump in excoriating National Football League players for recent demonstrations during the national anthem aimed at supporting social justice causes.

"I would condemn their actions,” Sessions said during question and answer period after his speech. The NFL demonstrations – in which players sat or knelt during the national anthem – wrongly "denigrated our political symbols."

“The president has free speech rights, too,” he said. "He sends soldiers out every day under the flag to defend their rights."

Yet Sessions's strong defense of Trump's NFL criticism appeared to conflict with his other positions in Tuesday's address that lauded such figures as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Jefferson who vowed to battle "every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

"The right to freely examine the moral and immoral, the prudent and the foolish, the practical and the inefficient, and the right to argue for their merits or demerits remain indispensable for a healthy republic,'' Sessions told the university gathering. "This has been known since the beginning our nation."

Ticking off recent free speech controversies that have engulfed campuses from Clemson, S.C., to Berkeley, Calif., Sessions said that “freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack.”

"The American university was once the center of academic freedom — a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas," Sessions said. “But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”

Referring to a survey of 450 colleges and universities by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Sessions said that 40% "maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected speech."

"But who decides what is offensive and what is acceptable?" Sessions said. “The university is about the search for truth, not the imposition of truth by a government censor. In this great land, the government does not get to tell you what to think or what to say."

Sessions' speech struck popular chords, even among some First Amendment lawyers who have made a living battling the government. But Sessions' support for the president's rebuke of NFL players did not appear track some of the powerful language the attorney general incorporated in his own speech.

"I think it’s a fine speech and that the attorney general is also quite right to say that the president has First Amendment rights, too,'' said attorney Floyd Abrams.

"But while the president has every right to differ with the message of the protesting players, it is unacceptable for him to demean them, let alone to curse them, because he disagrees with them."

Abrams, whose work on a catalog of high-profile First Amendment cases has cast him as a familiar advocate at the Supreme Court, said the attorney general "would serve us all well if he recalled for the president the eloquent words of (former) Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson that he read aloud today: 'If there is one fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.' "

Sessions’ speech here comes just days after Trump unexpectedly called out professional football players in a Friday night speech, urging owners to fire the "sons of b-----" who participated in on-field protests in support of social justice causes. The criticism prompted athletes in all professional sports to lash back at Trump, with many NFL football teams staging their own protests Sunday – and accusations that the president was trampling on the First Amendment rights of athletes.

Sessions's very appearance at the Georgetown campus also drew protests from students and professors, dozens of whom assembled on the steps of the law center, asserting that they had been denied entry to the hall where the attorney general spoke.

“We were uninvited,” said Amber Smith, a third-year law student and protest leader. “We are deeply disappointed in Georgetown Law."

Many students and teachers stood silently with tape over their mouths, while others raised hand-written placards, many of them denouncing the attorney general.

Randy Barnett, director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution which organized the event, acknowledged that Sessions' speech was "a closed, invitation-only" gathering in part to promote a "civil" discussion and guard the university from embarrassment.

"We did not screen for political views," Barnett said. A block of empty seats in the hall where Sessions spoke, however, offered mute testimony to the protests outside.

But the Georgetown controversy tracked similar recent eruptions on other college campuses, including the University of California at Berkeley.

Earlier this month, the campus was virtually locked down under heavy police guard to allow for a speech at the liberal university by conservative former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets, chanting "no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.'' The demonstrations resulted in a handful of arrests.

“We had a successful event," UC spokesman Dan Mogulof said earlier this month, adding that the university is committed to hosting speakers like Shapiro.

In his speech Tuesday, Sessions referred to the Berkeley incident, saying that the university was "forced to spend more than $600,000 and have an overwhelming police presence simply to prove that the mob was not in control of the campus."



"In the end, Mr. Shapiro spoke to a packed house," Sessions said. "And to my knowledge, no one fainted, no one was unsafe. No one needed counseling."

Inside the Georgetown Hall, Sessions spoke without interruption. The only demonstration occurred after the speech when a row of students, tape covering their mouths, rose in silent protest.

One of them, Elijah Staggers, a 25-year-old law student, said that while he believed Sessions' speech was "on point," he believed the university's decision to close to the general public was "wrong."

"My issue is with the implementation of the event," Staggers said. "Students just didn't have an adequate opportunity to participate."

Staggers said he was invited as a student in one of Barnett's classes.

"Hundreds would have loved to have been part of this," he said. "Just look outside."