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As soon as the applause began at its rally in Huntsville, Alabama, a year ago, President Trump knew he had a winning problem.
"Would not you like to see any of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, to say, 'Give up this son for the moment,'" said Trump at of a National Anthem footballers event. "Outside, he's fired, he's fired!
Usually portrayed as being against the flag or the country rather than racial injustice, the protests have become a favorite subject of Trump. This is the kind of cultural problem he knows well with his base, so he came back again and again. In July, during the off season, he declared that the problem was "alive and well", offering a new range of penalties available to players who choose to kneel during the anthem: "The first time on their knees, outside the match. Second time on your knees, out of season / without pay!
When Nike announced this week that it would center an advertising campaign around Colin Kaepernick, the footballer behind the outbreak, it seemed (to use another sporting analogy) that the company was posing the problem at Trump National Golf Club. . How did the president stand up to criticism once Nike raised the face of NFL protests in a new position of influence?
Trump retrograde. On Wednesday morning, he offered no public criticism of the decision or Nike – even if the change of conversation with Bob Woodward's new book could be helpful.
In an interview with the Daily Caller on Tuesday, Trump explained his approach without intervention.
"I think it's a terrible message," he said. "Nike is my tenant. They pay a lot of rent.
He went on to say that the hiring was "a terrible message and a message that should not be sent". But it's hard not to focus on Trump's immediate qualification for his thoughts: Nike gives him money.
It is possible that this answer is simply Trump being Trump. Remember that her first comments about Aretha Franklin's death included the enigmatic claim that she had "worked for" him. Trump seems to like to qualify conversations with personal connections with him.
But in this case, Trump was keen to point out that Nike is paying a lot of rent to the Trump Organization – which means, as Trump has said, indirectly to Trump, given that he did not never broke his ties with his business interests. Forbes said earlier this year that the amount Nike is paying for its ground floor retail space in Trump Tower is probably $ 13 million a year. Because Trump Organization is a private company – and because Trump repeatedly apologized for not publishing his tax returns – it's hard to know how much Nike is winning.
Or, won. Last year, Nike announced that, in anticipation of opening a new flagship store a little further south on Fifth Avenue, she was closing her Trump Tower store on 57th Street. (Trump's policy played a "minor role" in the decision to move, according to two employees who spoke with Forbes). In March, the Trump Tower space was empty. The largest commercial tenant of the building is Gucci, which has a store on the first floor on Fifth Avenue. The second largest, according to a 2012 filing of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is the government-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which has been operating since the tower.
It is unclear whether Nike's lease with the Trump organization, renewed for five years in mid-2017, forces the company to continue paying rent, even though it has left its premises. In other words, it is not clear if Nike again "Pay[s] a lot of rent, "in Trump's description.
Trump publishes an annual statement describing his income, but this document does not mention Nike. This is because Nike does not pay Trump directly: it pays the Trump organization. Most of Trump's annual archive is made up of dozens of public limited companies with the same name that serve as control companies for a variety of real estate interests. Trump's disclosure also does not refer to ICBC as indirectly paying for it, but Trump did not hesitate to make that relationship public. (In his campaign's launch speech in 2015, Trump said, "I love China." The biggest bank in the world is from China, where do you know where their headquarters are in the United States?
All this raises some additional questions. On the one hand, does Nike still pay rent to Trump? And, more importantly, is this business relationship the reason why Trump decided not to attack Nike directly for joining Kaepernick? This raises another question: who else pays the rent to Trump? Some of these relationships are public: we know that Gucci is doing it because we are on Fifth Avenue. (In the extremely unlikely case that Gucci would support the NFL protests, we'll see how Trump responds). Many others are private, obscured by the normal business practices of the Trump Organization, largely a black box through which money flows. indirectly to the president.
Perhaps, as we speculated at first, Trump's comment about Nike was just Trump talking about things like Trump does. But that he linked his answer as president to his relationship with Nike as a businessman necessarily draws new scrutiny where a wall has been erected between these two roles – and where this wall has gaps.
Something prevented Trump from attacking Nike and scoring points with his base (a base that, we noted, was so exacerbated by Nike that people were burning their shoes). Trump told the Daily Caller that Nike's decision "is what this country is all about, that you have certain freedoms to do things that other people think you should not do." Nike's choice for Kaepernick was, in other words, the freedom of Nike speech.
Of course, Mr. Trump also told the Daily Caller that the protesters were to be banned during the public hearings of his Supreme Court candidate. It is unclear whether any of these protesters were renting Trump properties.
Update: Soon after the publication of this article, Trump put forward Nike's decision on Twitter. Instead of criticizing society, he pointed to the supposed fallout from his decision.
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