Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas referred to fellow Democrat Doug Jones as “Doug Moore” and associated his Senate election to the on-field protests conducted by NFL players in a since deleted Tuesday tweet.
Jones defeated his Republican opponent Roy Moore in a tight race, capturing 49.9 percent to Moore’s 48.4 percent. Moore joined President Donald Trump in harshly criticizing NFL players who chose to kneel on the field during the pre-game national anthem to protest racial injustice.
Lee dropped to a knee on the House floor in September in solidarity with the players.
“I kneel in honor of them. I kneel in front of the flag and on this floor,” Lee said.
“I kneel in honor of the First Amendment. I kneel because the flag is a symbol for freedom. I kneel because I’m going to stand against racism. I kneel because I will stand with those young men and I’ll stand with our soldiers. And I’ll stand with America, because I kneel,” she added.
“It’s against the law, you know that?” Moore told TIME Magazine in October. “It was an act of Congress that every man stand and put their hand over their heart. That’s the law.”
“If they didn’t have it in there, it would just be tradition. But this is law,” he added. “If we disobey this, what else are we going to disobey?”
Trump has repeatedly raised the issue of kneeling NFL players throughout the 2017 season, deriding the players’ conduct and calling for NFL owners to fire them. Vice President Mike Pence went so far as to leave an NFL game at the president’s direction after players kneeled during the national anthem.
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