Washington, Sep 26 (EFE).- US President Donald Trump continued Tuesday his attacks against the National Football League (NFL) and said the number of fans at its games has fallen dramatically because of the players’ protests during the national anthem, while at the same time he accused North Korea of torture at a time of maximum tension between the two countries.
Trump targeted both in his morning tweets..
“Ratings for NFL football are way down except before game starts, when people tune in to see whether or not our country will be disrespected!” the president said on his Twitter account.
With reference to the Monday night game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Arizona Cardinals, he said “the booing at the NFL football game last night, when the entire Dallas team dropped to its knees, was loudest I have ever heard.”
Around the NFL on Monday, some teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks stayed in their locker rooms while the national anthem was being played, while others locked arms as a sign of protest.
Trump has repeatedly criticized these protests by players against police violence toward African Americans, insisting that they have nothing to do with racism and urging team owners to “fire” players who take part in such unpatriotic disrespect for the American flag, anthem and country.
In another tweet, Trump noted Tuesday that “while Dallas dropped to its knees as a team, they all stood up for our National Anthem. Big progress being made-we all love our country!”
On another subject, Trump referred Tuesday on Twitter to the young American Otto Warmbier, a student who went as a tourist to North Korea and died in a coma after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to take a propaganda poster from a Pyongyang hotel room.
Pyongyang freed Warmbier last July in a state of coma and the young man died six days later in the United States at age 22.
“Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea,” Trump said following a TV interview of the young man’s parents Tuesday on “Fox and Friends,” their first since his death.
Trump’s comments come at a time of extreme bilateral tension sparked by the dispatch of US bombers along the coast of Pyongyang and after the North Korean foreign minister said that Washington had declared war on his country.