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President Donald Trump told The Daily Caller on Tuesday that he thought Nike putting former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick on their “Just Do It” campaign was a “terrible message,” but said that the move was what “this country is all about.”
In a Tuesday interview, the president said that he disagreed with the company's “endorsement” of Kaepernick, saying that “wouldn’t have done it.” But he also noted that Nike—a tenant of his that pays “a lot of rent,” he said—was doing something emblematic of freedom in the United States. “In another way, it is what this country is all about, that you have certain freedoms to do things that other people think you shouldn’t do, but I personally am on a different side of it,” he said. (Forbes reported last year, however, that Nike planned to move out of its Trump-owned office space.)
Trump has repeatedly bashed NFL players who followed Kaepernick’s 2016 lead in kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Last year, Trump tweeted that the protests had “nothing to do with race” and even suggested punishment for players who participated. Meanwhile, the NFL responded to Kaepernick’s Nike campaign on Tuesday, saying they thought the “social justice issues” brought to light by the former quarterback and others deserved their “attention and action.”