NEW ORLEANS — President Donald Trump said that Drew Brees will regret his apology after the Saints QB originally said he would never support protesting during the national anthem.
In an interview with his son, Donald Trump Jr., on the President's YouTube channel, Trump said that Brees' first statement to Yahoo Finance was "beautiful."
"Proud of the flag. Proud of the country. Proud of everything," Trump said. "Talked about his father and his grandfather serving and then the following day, was almost like ‘I take it back.’"
In an interview with Yahoo Finance on June 3, Brees said "I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country."
Since then, Brees has apologized twice and said his comments were "insensitive and completely missed the mark."
"Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community, I realize this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been," Brees said in an Instagram post addressed to Trump. "We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities."
Trump said he was shocked that Brees would apologize, because he considers him "a champion and a star."
"I've never seen anything like it and I think he hurt himself badly," Trump said. "I was going to put out that he’ll regret that in the future years because you stand for the flag. You have to stand for the flag and our anthem. The national anthem. You have to stand. I think the NFL’s gonna have a lot of problems if they don’t."
The President went on to say that he believes Drew Brees only apologized for PR reasons and to appease his teammates and that his apology wasn't genuine.
"I don’t believe he believes his second statement. By the way, he may believe it, but what he should be doing is not talking about the second, he should have stuck with his first,” Trump said.
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