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By Graham Lanktree
Staff Writer
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President Donald Trump is using controversies around Columbus Day and NFL players kneeling in protest of police brutality to raise money and support for his 2020 re-election campaign.
An email sent to Trump supporters by the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign Sunday offered a discount on official merchandise in a Columbus Day sale, while also including a message condemning a perceived threat to American history.
The email reads: "America's past is being vilified and stripped away by liberals in the media and our schools—but we won't stand for it."
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It continues: "That's why we're celebrating Christopher Columbus's legendary voyage to America with an EXCLUSIVE Columbus Day Sale!" It encouraged Trump voters to "save 25% on all Official Trump merchandise" in the campaign's online store.
In Trump's Columbus Day message released last Friday, he encouraged Americans to "honor the skilled navigator and man of faith, whose courageous feat brought together continents and has inspired countless others to pursue their dreams and convictions."
Columbus's 1492 voyage from Europe, which landed in the Bahamas, opened up Central, South and North America to Europeans who colonized the region and killed millions of people from indigenous populations.
Controversy and debate about whether to honor Columbus has led San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and other U.S. cities to adopt Indigenous Peoples Day. Last Thursday Austin, Texas, became the latest American city to change its celebration of the national holiday.
Read more: Did Donald Trump send Mike Pence to the NFL just to walk out as a PR stunt?
Trump made no mention of the suffering endured by Native Americans in his Columbus Day message as President Barack Obama did in previous years.
The president's campaign email about the Columbus Day sale said that "Leftists" are pushing "harder and harder to erase our nation's past" before calling on them to buy something at a discount to support the president's campaign.
The Redhawk Native American Arts Council is hosting a Re-Thinking Columbus Day event in New York City Monday. Activists are calling on the city to change the name of the parade.
"If they're going to celebrate Columbus, we need to celebrate the fact that we survived Columbus," the group's cultural director Cliff Matias told the Associated Press. About 35,000 people are expected to march in New York's Columbus Day parade.
The Columbus Day sale email is the Trump-Pence campaign's latest effort to fight an offensive against what members of the American hard-right see as a culture war against political correctness and movements calling for equality between the sexes, LGBTQ, and ethnic and religious groups.
On September 25 another Trump-Pence 2020 campaign email with the subject line "Stand or kneel?" took aim at NFL football players who have begun kneeling at games during the national anthem to protest a string of deaths of black men at the hands of police. The practice was started by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
"When the national anthem plays, President Trump proudly stands and places his hand over his heart out of respect for our flag, our country, and our heroes," the email reads, directing Trump supporters "to show you stand with the President, take our Where Do You Stand: Approval Poll today."
Trump weighed in on the protest by NFL players September 30 after as many as 200 players knelt for the anthem the weekend before.
"Very important that NFL players STAND tomorrow, and always, for the playing of our National Anthem. Respect our Flag and our Country!" Trump tweeted.
On Sunday Vice President Mike Pence walked out of a 49ers-Colts football game in Indianapolis after about a dozen San Francisco players knelt for the national anthem.
"I asked @VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled, disrespecting our country," Trump wrote on Twitter afterward. During a rally in Alabama September 22 Trump called on NFL team owners to fire any player who doesn't stand for the anthem. Since then several teams have ordered their players to stand when the anthem plays.
"Just so we're clear: Mike Pence tweeted a 3yr old photo & showed up to an NFL game knowing he'd leave to make his base angry at blck players," tweeted Clint Smith, a PhD candidate at Harvard studying incarceration, education, and inequality after the vice president's walk out.
"I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem," Pence wrote on Twitter, using an acronym for the president of the United States.
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