I knew this was coming as soon as he invited them. In fact, I thought that it wouldn’t be wise to invite them in the first place, but then he would be seen as ungracious if he didn’t because he invited the Patriots. I thought perhaps the controversy with him and the NFL was dying down, but then the NFL announced its new anthem policy, and I figured a lot of players would not be happy with him. I’m sure there are other reasons. The media/left have him painted as a racist, so I’m sure that there are players who are protesting him because of that.
Trump is a media guy. He knows the optics, and he knows they lied last year when the Patriots came about how many players were there. It was less than Obama, but the majority came. Trump knows he’s going to get hit either way - cancel and take some heat or go through with it and have pictures splashed everywhere in the press comparing past ceremonies with this one. The left would love it and would splash it all over social media.
That said, the White House should have probably found out how many were going to come prior to inviting 1,000 Eagles fans. If known, he then could have had the small group that wanted to come and just had a small ceremony in the Oval Office for them and some lunch. The photo disparity wouldn’t look bad if not done like the usual ones where they are outside. Those could be used for comparisons, but it would be much harder to do that with an Oval Office picture. They could just say it was a small gathering of a few Eagles players who won the Super Bowl.
The bottom line is that I think that he takes the heat either way, but in this case, there won’t be pictures for the press to use.
I will follow the lead of MY President and disinvite the NFL into my house.
The NFL really screwed up here. They should have insisted that the players attend, proposing to send such a small delegation really makes the league look partisan and hostile to those who they disagree with politically.