Football legend and actor Jim Brown praised President Donald Trump and America this morning, following up on his criticism of black professional athletes kneeling during the national anthem.
Brown, 82, an African-American, asked on Fox & Friends if Trump is a racist, said:
“I’m so glad you asked me that. Of course not. You know, is America racist? Of course not. The emancipation, the advancement of black people in this country is based upon white people who risked their lives just to do the right thing to make the playing field equal and balanced,” Brown said Tuesday morning.
“So, we always talk about the negative, but what about the positive?” Brown continued. “How many black athletes are millionaires because of those fans, white fans that go to those games? The NBA, the National Football League? Those organizations would be out of business were it not for people of, not of color, but white people that go to those games and support those teams. So we have to give credit to the positive aspect of what people are doing in America, and stop going to the negative first.”
Brown, who is considered by many to have been the greatest running back in the history of professional football, continued his criticism of NFL players taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem before games to protest police violence against blacks.
“The bottom line is this: We should never denigrate our flag and our national anthem. We should always be Americans first, and we should work our butts off to do the right thing and make it a better country. But to not respect your flag and your national anthem, is something that I would never do,” Brown said.
Problems in the black community like high murder rates aren’t the president’s fault, Brown said.
“We should look at ourselves first before we look at the president,” Brown said.
Asked is Trump “is producing for the black community,” Brown said blacks have that responsibility first.
“The black community, and I’m a part of the community, has a responsibility regardless of what the president does. And if you have a homicide rate within your black community, then it’s not the president that’s created that homicide rate, it’s the black community itself that needs to address it. So I don’t want to just put everything on him,” Brown said. “And I’m sorry to say that the black community is not doing what we should do, and that includes myself. I can work harder, I can donate more money, I can go more places. But we have to be able to, as citizens, bring something that the president can join forces with and triple the effectiveness of it.”
Brown praised Trump’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea. He also said Trump listens to him when he brings ideas to him, which he appreciates.
“This president is accessible, and he’s different. He’s challenging. And he pays attention to what I say,” Brown said.
Fox host Brian Kilmeade played a recent clip from moviemaker Spike Lee saying that “the United States of America was built upon the genocide of native people and slavery.”
Brown said Lee is right about the horrors of slavery, but that white people helped end it and helped get blacks to a better place in American society.
“We’re no longer in slavery, we have self-determination, and this country is the greatest country in the world,” Brown said. “So although, when you look at slavery, slavery is an abominable type of situation, it’s the reality of our past. But we’ve gone way beyond that particular kind of situation. And we should look at the positive rather than the negative, and do all things that we can do — not point the figure at someone else — but we can do, as a society, to make things better in our country.”
