Vacationing Trump Tells Protesting NFL Players To 'Be Cool'

In a moment he’s almost certainly been waiting for since this past February, President Donald Trump leapt on the last night’s NFL pre-season protests, where players from teams across the league knelt, raised their fists, or simply didn’t appear on field for the singing of the National Anthem.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s early-morning, racially-tinged rant—delivered while the president vacations at his Bedminster, NJ golf course—appears to have been inspired by (you guessed it!) a Fox News segment minutes earlier, in which anchor Brian Kilmeade whined that calling attention to systemic racism and police brutality is “alienating the people that matter most and, sadly, they’re being ignored, and that’s the fans.”

“It’s not that your cause isn’t just, we want to hear about it,” Kilmeade added. “Just, we can’t hear it when the national anthem is playing.”

Threatening that protesting players will be “suspended without pay” (That’s not your call, dude) Trump suggested instead that the athletes “be happy, be cool!”

Because, if anyone is synonymous with being “cool” while playing sports, it’s this guy.