The question is, how do you feel about NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem? And is it disrespectful to this country, to the flag, to service members who are right there tonight, where it is tonight, in Afghanistan, and those former service members, retirees and veterans, who are here with us today? Thank you each for your service.

My short answer is no, I don’t think it’s disrespectful. Here is my longer answer – but I’m gonna try to make sure I get this right, because I think it’s a really important question. And reasonable people can disagree on this issue. Let’s begin there, and it makes them no less American to come down on a different conclusion on this issue. Right? You can feel as the young man does, you can feel as I do, you are every bit as American all the same.

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Someone mentioned reading the Taylor Branch book – Parting the Waters: [America in] the King Years. When you read that book and find out what Dr King and this non-violent peaceful movement to secure better – because they didn’t get full – civil rights for their fellow Americans, the challenges they faced, those that died, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for the crime of trying to be a man, trying to be a woman, in this country. The young girls who died in the church bombing, those who were beaten within an inch of their life crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, with John Lewis. Those who were punched in the face, spat upon, dragged out by their collar from the Woolworth lunch counter, for sitting with white people at the same lunch counter in the same country where their fathers may have bled the same blood on the battlefields of Omaha Beach or Okinawa or anywhere where anyone served this country.

The freedoms we have were purchased not just by those in uniform – and they definitely were – but also by those who took their lives into their hands riding those Greyhound buses, the Freedom Riders, in the deep south, in the 1960s, who knew full well they would be arrested, and they were – serving time in the Mississippi state penitentiary. Rosa Parks getting from the back of the bus to the front of the bus.

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Peaceful, non-violent protest – including taking a knee at a football game – to point out that black men, unarmed, black teenagers, unarmed, and black children, unarmed, are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement, without accountability and without justice. And this problem, as grave as it is, is not gonna fix itself. And they’re frustrated, frankly, with people like me, and those in positions of public trust and power who have been unable to resolve this or bring justice for what has been done and to stop it from continuing to happen in this country.

And so non-violently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee, to bring our attention and our focus to this problem, to ensure that we fix it. That is why they do it, and I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, anyplace. Thank you very much for asking the question. I appreciate it.