Vice President Mike Pence was in Indianapolis today for the Colts-49ers game. Pence, the former Indiana governor and Congressman, was on hand in part for the Colts ceremony honoring Peyton Manning. However, he didn’t stay long.
I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem.
— Vice President Mike Pence Archived (@VP45) October 8, 2017
I stand with @POTUS Trump, I stand with our soldiers, and I will always stand for our Flag and our National Anthem. pic.twitter.com/B0zP5M41MQ
— Vice President Mike Pence Archived (@VP45) October 8, 2017
If you’re wondering how they had that official letterhead statement ready to go mere minutes after Pence was so shocked by players kneeling that he felt he had to leave immediately, as though he had found himself alone with a woman during a business meeting, the answer is that it was planned the entire time.
Here’s a release from President Trump on the matter:
https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot/status/917092503844667392
To recap, the President sent the Vice President to a football game featuring the 49ers, a team that would definitely be protesting during the anthem, and then launched a plan to literally grandstand (there were bleachers and everything) with a huffy exit. All to ostensibly score political points by purposefully and willfully misinterpreting the protests of the athletes in question. (To recap, they’re not protesting the national anthem, or the troops, or the flag, they’re demonstrating that the principles of the country those things represent shouldn’t allow for the kind of institutional racial injustice that continues to go unpunished.)
But the silly thing is, even if you play by the Vice President’s logic, it doesn’t make sense. Even if athletes were in fact disrespecting the troops or the flag, which they’re not, let’s remember that Vice President Pence decided to support, and run alongside, a President who mocked Senator John McCain and every other prisoner of war, while also belittling the parents of Gold Star recipient Humayun Khan.
Those actions and words Vice President Pence is more than okay with endorsing, but a few players kneeling before a football game in an effort to promote racial equality? That’s worth storming out of a football game.
To top it off, the Vice President’s early departure threw a wrench in the travel plans of Indiana’s other Big 4 professional sports team:
Pacers now delayed on flight to Detroit waiting for Pence to depart.
— David Benner (@PacersDMB) October 8, 2017
Presumably the Pacers were more than fine waiting if it meant getting the Vice President out of Indiana again as quickly as possible.
UPDATE:
Also there’s this, wherein Pence recycled a three-year-old picture as if it was from today:
https://twitter.com/sung_minkim/status/917104119403261953
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