‘You can’t have a non profit with this mission statement then open your doors to Trump…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Ranked the 61st overall wide receiver by NFL.com, Miami Dolphins starter Kenny Stills is known more for his sideline antics these days than his on-field exploits.
Stills cracked triple digits in receiving yardage only twice last season, but he remained in headlines as one of the anthem-kneeling protesters continuing the legacy of unsigned former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Evidently, his team’s willingness to tolerate Stills’s public protest of his anti-American political views was not enough for the diva receiver, though—he also insists that those be the only ones the team tolerates, according to Sports Illustrated.
Stills pitched a fit on Wednesday over the fact that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross planned to host a fundraiser for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.
The fundraiser, planned for Friday in the Hamptons, New York, will charge $100,000 for a photo with the president and $250,000 to participate in a round-table discussion, The Washington Post reported.
Stills attacked Ross over the fact that he also manages a nonprofit called the Ross Initiative for Sports and Equality—which, according to its mission statement, “educates and empowers the sports community to eliminate racial discrimination, champion social justice and improve race relations.”
Those two efforts were incompatible, he tweeted.
🤔 You can’t have a non profit with this mission statement then open your doors to Trump. https://t.co/sNBWfEXvLn pic.twitter.com/nNkRf2wJep
— Kenny Stills (@KSTiLLS) August 7, 2019
Stills’s Twitter regularly intersperses political commentary and activism with sports updates and personal musings. He has continued to show his solidarity with Kaepernick during the NFL preseason.
Another anthem-kneeling activist, Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid, already indicated that he planned to continue the protest in the upcoming season.
Though the protests are widely believed to have contributed to a plummet in league viewership over the past three years, ratings saw a minor uptick last year over the previous season—during which Trump had encouraged patriotic NFL fans to boycott the league.
Backlash led the NFL to establish a policy in May 2018 requiring all players on the field to stand for the national anthem, but resistance from the players’ union prompted the league to announce in July, before the season started, that they would not enforce it.
The league currently leaves the decision to the players, though the kneeling is not often broadcast by networks and has been actively discouraged by some teams.