Like many leaders, Colin Kaepernick was alone when he first took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence and racism.
His friend, Eric Reid, soon joined him, and after some time, many of Kaep's fellow NFL players decided to join them. The #TakeAKnee movement was born.
And with it came a chorus of opponents, the most vocal among them being President Donald Trump, who attacked the protesting players in press appearances, at rallies and, of course, in tweets.
After months of attacking the protesting players, Trump now says he wants their help, according to NY Daily News.
Trump has been on a pardoning spree of late; some political commentators claim he is doing so to show those being taken down by the Mueller investigation that they are safe. Whether this is true, Trump has pardoned two high-profile black Americans in recent weeks: the late Jack Johnson, imprisoned for breaking miscegenation laws, and Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother facing life for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense.
Now it seems the president wants to pardon more people.
In what appears to be the first time he's acknowledging the real reason behind the protests, Trump is asking those players who feel marginalized people are unfairly treated by the justice system to step forward and recommend names for him to pardon.
"What I'm thinking to do, you have a lot of people in the NFL in particular … they're not proud enough to stand for our national anthem," said Trump. "I'm gonna ask all of those people to recommend to me … people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system and I'm gonna ask them to recommend to me, people that were unfairly treated, friends of theirs or people that they know about and I'm gonna take a look at those applications."
"And if I find and my committee finds that they were unfairly treated, then we will pardon them or at least let them out," Trump promised.
Trump recently met with Kim Kardashian West to discuss prison reform, a meeting that ultimately led to Alice Marie Johnson's release.
Trump is also considering pardoning Muhammad Ali, whose conviction for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971.
