After Drew Brees openly disagreed with anyone disrespecting our flag, the NFL star issued an apology for what many considered racially “insensitive” comments.
“I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America, or our country,” said Brees, in part. “In many cases, it brings me to tears thinking about all that has been sacrificed – and not just those in the military, but for that matter, those throughout the Civil Rights movements of the 60s, and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point.”
“Is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not,” the New Orleans Saints QB continued. “We still have a long way to go. But I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together, we can all do better, and that we are all part of the solution.”
Highlight: @readdanwrite asks @drewbrees what the star NFL quarterback thinks about “players kneeling again when the NFL season starts.”@drewbrees: “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.”
Full exchange: pic.twitter.com/MpCkFyOMed
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) June 3, 2020
The quarterback received massive backlash for his comments made in a brief interview posted on Twitter that has now been viewed nearly 12 million times. Many of those comments even came from fellow NFL players.
Brees quickly apologized, and even publicly replied to Donald Trump who called him out for backing down.
“We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities,” Brees wrote to Trump on Instagram. “We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week. We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform.”
Just one day after her husband publicly apologized, Drew Brees’ wife, Brittany, issued her own apology on Instagram, emphasizing that ‘we are the problem.’
“WE ARE THE PROBLEM. I write this with tears in my eyes and I hope you all hear our hearts,” Brittany wrote on an Instagram post shared on the “Brees Dream Foundation” page.
