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Photo by Jean Levac / Postmedia

Offensive tackle SirVincent Rogers said what happened in his home country was a “bunch of nonsense” that he also found embarrassing.

“A lot of stuff being said, from our leader of the free world down, I’m not in support of it,” Rogers said. “There’s a lot of injustices and a lot of things going on in the U.S., and I think those are the things we should be more focused on, more so than guys that are peacefully protesting.

“Any time the topic comes up when we’re here, it’s one of those things where you almost want to just pull your shirt over your head and kind of sink into nothing.”

Linebacker Kevin Brown said the real issue — racial inequality — was being overlooked. Firing black players who were trying to instigate a change would be a bigger problem, he added.

“I feel like maybe they don’t value what they’re doing in the States, our efforts,” Brown said. “We’re just trying to be seen as more than just athletes. We have rights, as individuals, as human beings, in the States.

“I’ve even come up here to Canada and I’ve seen how diverse and how ethnic it is, how inviting everybody is, and it’s made me even want that more for our country. In the States, we want it to be like that. Liberty and justice for all, that’s all we want.”

Brown said it was embarrassing that people might think Trump was speaking for the majority.

“So it looks like we’re the ignorant ones,” he said. “It’s our fault for electing and putting a president in that position to even have that voice in the first place.

“It just stinks that we’ve got to go back to something like that,” he added, referring to when the CFL season ends. “But it is what it is. It’s our country, it’s our mess.

“I actually like that Donald Trump is doing this because I feel like it’s going to unite us as a people. We’ve had issues in the past of black Americans not really uniting on issues since (Martin Luther King’s) death. There’s been things that have been breaking the black family apart. I feel that is going to help unite us as a people, hopefully start making strides to elevate us to the future.”