Giants linebacker Mark Herzlich wants to have an actual conversation about the national anthem with President Donald Trump.
And he wants to do it more than 140 characters at a time.
According to Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News, Herzlich said he’d like to invite Trump to come to Giants camp to discuss the issue with players.
“I think the best way to handle remarks like that is it’s not necessarily a push back against his remarks. It’s to maintain the focus on the real issue,” Herzlich said. “The real issue isn’t players being against a president or against a country. It’s about players being for unity, and they want to create an atmosphere with law enforcement, with others in their community that we share in the locker room.
“You go in the locker room and guys from every single race, every single demographic, every single religious background, and we all are just a team. And so I think we see that, what’s possible. And I would love Trump to come down here and hang out in our locker room and see what locker room talk’s really about, and talking about our night nurses and our babies — this is what we talk about, it’s a family.”
Herzlich is a member of the NFLPA’s executive committee, and has met with league officials on such topics before, at least before the league enacted a unilateral “compromise” which declared that any player on the field had to stand for the anthem, while allowing players the option to stay in the locker room.
Trump followed up by saying that players who knelt during the anthem “shouldn’t be in the country,” which has only fanned the flames.
Perhaps as a direct result, Giants coach Pat Shurmur said he wanted to wait to discuss the new policy with his players.
“We have not discussed it as a team,” Shurmur said. “We’re gonna sort of let it settle for a little bit here. It’s like any new rule, it’s a new policy, and I certainly trust that our players are going to do the right thing. And I think we just let it settle for a minute. At some point we’ll discuss it, but we just haven’t done it yet.”
As Panthers wide receiver Torrey Smith mentioned earlier in the day, Herzlich said he’d prefer the focus to remain on work being done by players in the community, rather than any symbolic action during the anthem.
"(What we want to do is) get from the protests to being active in the community,” Herzlich said. “Let’s get in the community with the police and ride along so maybe the first time a kid meets a policeman is in their school in a positive environment. So what we’re trying to do is, OK, we have everybody talking about it, how can we now take the next step to act upon it? So I think that’s our main focus with the PA [Players Association] and the players, now that it’s being talked about again, it’s an opportunity for us to get out in the community and do something about it.”
To do that, however, one would have to focus on the actual issues players are concerned about, rather than easily weaponized talking points for political advantage.