Is Arizona Cardinals Exec’s Support of Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Hypocritical?

The NFL doesn’t want players to speak out but has no problem with owners doing it.

Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill before the start of the NFL game against the San Francisco 49ers at the University of Phoenix Stadium on October 1, 2017 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Arizona Cardinals president Michael Bidwill before the start of the NFL game against the San Francisco 49ers at the University of Phoenix Stadium on October 1, 2017 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Christian Petersen

On Monday night, Arizona Cardinals team president Michael Bidwill used the team’s website to publish a story praising President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

Essentially, what Bidwill did was use the platform he has thanks to his involvement with the NFL to share his personal political beliefs with a national audience – exactly what the league has asked its players not to do with the national anthem protests.

As Nancy Armour of USA TODAY argues, what Bidwill did on Monday night is completely hypocritical and shows the NFL doesn’t want its (mostly black) players to speak out but has no problem with its (mostly white) league executives doing it.

“The NFL, its owners and, yes, some fans have absolutely no problem with politics or polarizing displays so long as they align with their way of thinking,” Armour writes. “Tim Tebow taking a knee after a touchdown to honor God? He’s a good Christian and we need more of that! Players protesting in an effort to draw attention to criminal and economic systems that are biased against people of color? They’re ungrateful SOBs who are disrespecting the flag, the anthem and the military!”

Bidwill was a high school classmate of Kavanaugh, an appellate court judge based in Washington D.C., at Washington’s Georgetown Prep.

New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman also attended school there with Kavanaugh and signed a letter that Bidwill sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of his ex-classmate’s Supreme Court candidacy.

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