As this is written, the most recent dust up from Trump World is the cancelation of the traditional Rose Garden photo op of the president and the champions of some major sports league or the other, in this case, the champions of the National Football League, the Philadelphia Eagles.

In apparent response to the president’s ongoing charm offensive with the league’s players – calling them names that cannot be printed in a family newspaper, loudly recommending that they should be fired, if not ejected from the country, for exercising their First Amendment rights – many of the Eagles players made it known they would forego the Rose Garden event rather than appear as background props for someone who has insulted and belittled them, and theirs, on multiple occasions.

Rather than risking a garden party where significant numbers of the honorees might fail to show; the president simply cancelled the event. Given the president’s obsession with crowd sizes, the move was not a total surprise, and certainly was within his Article II powers. We all know how obsessed he is currently with the presidential powers set out in Article II of the Constitution.

“Wait a minute,” the president’s base responds. “This is all about those overpaid ingrates taking a knee during the national anthem and disrespecting everything America stand for!”

Actually, no, it isn’t, because the Eagles players never took a knee to protest anything. Other teams may have. The Eagles did not.

It’s about a double standard. It’s okay for the fans to head to the nearest concession stand during the anthem for a last-minute brewski; it’s something else entirely for the hired help to use the opportunity to draw attention to what they consider to be inequality in the treatment of minorities by law enforcement, or the blackballing from the sport of the player who started it all.

It’s about pleasing the base. The president’s vendetta against NFL players didn’t start immediately after Colin Kaepernick’s initial protest. It began after he tried out a line or two about the issue at one of his ego-massaging campaign-style rallies and got a raucous crowd reaction. The president may be many things, but a marketing fool he is not.

He is fully aware that the fate of his presidency depends upon his ability to hold the loyalists who would continue to support him even if, as he once said, he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. Should he lose that base, he is toast … and he knows it.

It’s about continuing his strategy for further dividing Americans into their separate tribes. For every writer who passionately questions his actions as I have, there will be another who passionately supports them.

In our disunity lies his strength.

Once again I am reminded of this remarkable monologue from The American President: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve got to want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, and who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.’ You want to claim this land is the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate it in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”

Or maybe the symbol is of a football player taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled  Banner.”

I am aware that the NFL owners submitted to presidential pressure and made it a finable offense to kneel or sit during the anthem. As the reasoning goes, if the players want to protest, let them do it on their own time.

I would suggest that peacefully exercising First Amendment rights is in the finest tradition of everything for which America stands. Repression of that right, even when legally permissible, is not.

Just a thought.