President Donald Trump extended an offer Friday to professional athletes protesting the national anthem to come up with a list of people they believed should be pardoned for their crimes.
“I am going to ask all of those people to recommend to me, because that’s what their protesting, people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system,” Trump said.
The president made his remarks to reporters before leaving the White House for his trip to Canada for the G7 summit.
Trump said it was time to move beyond “talk” and focus on specific actions, and challenged the athletes to come to the table.
“I’m going to ask them to recommend to me people that were unfairly treated, friends of theirs or people they know about and I’m going to take a look at those applications,” he said.
Trump said the was not looking to “grandstand” on the issue, but said that it was time to address “abuse” and “unfairness” in the system.
He also repeated his preference that all Americans and professional athletes stand and recognize the national anthem again.
“We have a great country, you should stand for our national anthem. you shouldn’t go in a locker room when our national anthem is played,” Trump said.
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