Colin Kaepernick’s Girlfriend Affirms His Commitment to #TakeAKnee

The tension between Donald Trump and the NFL players who’ve participated in the Take A Knee movement continues to grow after Vice President Mike Pence left the Indianapolis Colts game, per Trump’s instructions, when team members kneeled for the national anthem. While the controversy surrounding Pence’s departure ensued, reports that Colin Kaepernick, the football player who spearheaded the movement, would sacrifice his beliefs by standing for the anthem for another shot in the NFL started circulating.

Those reports, according to his girlfriend, Nessa Diab, are false. On Oct. 8, she tweeted: “The report that Colin will stand for the anthem are completely false! He has never discussed this with anyone.”

Minutes after Diab’s post, Kaepernick obliquely chimed in on the erroneous report as well: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Winston S. Churchill,” the athlete wrote.

Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports, who wrote the offending article, came forward on social media to say that his words were misconstrued. “Standing for Anthem wasn’t something that I spoke to Colin about sat. I relayed what had been reported about him standing in the future,” he clarified on Twitter. La Canfora’s original story was referenced by a few outlets, including the Associated Press (AP), who later issued a correction.

In August of 2016, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback kneeled during the national anthem in protest of racial discrimination and police brutality. After receiving backlash for what people perceived as “disrespect to the flag,” Kaepernick was out of a job and became a free agent.

The controversy regained traction when Trump began a feud with NFL players who chose to kneel during the anthem. He called athletes who refuse to stand for the flag “sons of b******,” demanding that they be “fired,” which outraged many players, leading some to take a knee in protest of Trump and social injustice.