【Telugu Archives】

UPDATED(Weds. March 21,Telugu Archives 2017 8:30 a.m. ET) to add Kaepernick's response donation

While President Trump wants to take credit for the country's job growth numbers whenever it benefits him, there's one man whose unemployment Trump is happy to be responsible for: Colin Kaepernick.

Kaepernick, who stirred up controversy last year when he refused to stand for the national anthem in protest of police brutality and mistreatment of the black community, is a free agent and yet can't seem to even get an interview with any NFL team.

As our own Sam Laird notes, Kaepernick has struggled over the last few seasons, but led the 49ers to the Super Bowl a few years ago and has some pretty decent stats on his sheet. Plus, at 29 years old, Kaepernick has enough gas left in the tank and athletic ability to be helpful for a decent number of teams who could sign him to a smaller, low-risk contract.

But Kaep remains unemployed.

On Monday night during a rally in Kentucky, Donald Trump boasted on himself -- shocking! -- saying that he, Trump, was the reason that Kaepernick couldn't get a job. But Trump's statement goes beyond just the typical Trump-brag tomfoolery.

Trump's refusal to just say Kaepernick's name -- "The San Francisco quarterback, I'm sure nobody ever heard of him" -- is trolling at it's finest. Of course everyone knows who Trump's talking about; you can tell by the way they boo. And Trump himself has spoken out on Kaepernick's protests before.

Trump then brags about reading an article (though he doesn't say it, it was on the Turner-owned, CNN-adjacent Bleacher Report) that said NFL owners are afraid of signing Kaepernick because they don't want Trump to tweet about them.

In the article, an anonymous NFL GM tells Mike Freeman, "some teams fear the backlash from fans after getting him. They think there might be protests or [President Donald] Trump will tweet about the team. I'd say that number is around 10 percent. Then there's another 10 percent that has a mix of those feelings."

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First of all, there's rich irony in Trump not only citing but also basking in the glory of a report that comes from an anonymous source, something Trump has fumed about (even as he's been one himself).

Second, the idea that the mere threat of a tweet has some NFL teams, worth billions of dollars, living in fear of the president saying something mean about them, is absurd. A league that's rife with incompetent management (hello, Cleveland and Washington football teams) and dunderheaded leadership (hi, Roger!) has some worried about the president including them in one of his tweet storms?

And, third, bragging about forcing unemployment upon an accomplished black man in front of a very white crowd in a state that hasn't had the most forward-thinking views on race in recent years is, well, kind of bad optics, to be understated about it.

There's also something pretty gross about the President of the United States taking joy and credit in a person's inability to find employment simply for exercising his First Amendment rights, regardless of whether or not you agree with his politics. But, such is life in Trump's America, where retribution is the name of the game.

As for Kaepernick, he's keeping busy, new contract or not.

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Though there were plenty of headlines about his recent decision to stand for the anthem again, less noted were some of his more charitable actions, like his foundation donating $1 million to organizations for the underprivileged (matched by the 49ers) and his role in the crowd-funded Love Army For Somalia, which has generated $2 million in donations to famine-stricken Somalia and wrangled a Turkish Airlines plane to send food, water, and other aid.

And on Tuesday, as Trump's comments bounced around the internet, Kaepernick made another donation: $50,000 to Meals on Wheels, one of the programs infamously cut from Trump's proposed 2018 budget.