JOE NICHOLSON-USA TODAY SPORTS/ REUTERS
In an apparent attempt to remedy his bitter feud with the players of the National Football League, President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would seek their recommendations for pardons as he considers over 3,000 cases for clemency, reports Reuters. Tensions between the White House and the NFL began months earlier, when Trump criticized players for kneeling during the national anthem, and intensified this week when he disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles from a White House Super Bowl ceremony. “I am going to ask all of those people to recommend to me, because that’s what they’re protesting—people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system. And I understand that,” Trump told reporters. “They’ve seen a lot of abuse and they’ve seen a lot of unfairness.” Although the NFL Players Association has not released a comment on Trump’s pardon request, other civil rights advocates doubted the president’s motives. “His suggestion that he might bring NFL players into the pardon process must be viewed as nothing less than a cynical, self-serving ploy to create a photo op with NFL players,” sociologist and civil-rights activist Harry Edwards told Reuters, “many of whom have made it clear that they would not be caught standing downwind from him, much less next to him.”