Cowboys Owner to Bench Players Who "Disrespect" Flag
COOPER: More now on the NFL protest. Players kneeling instead of standing for the national anthem. As we mentioned Vice President Mike Pence walked out of the Colts/49ers game yesterday in protest after some 49ers players took a knee. Then later in the day, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones spoke to the reporters in the locker room and said, "There is no equivocation. We're standing for the flag. If there's anything that is disrespectful to the flag, then we will not play." Tonight, Jerry Jones still talking about this. He then interview tonight with ESPN reporter, Chris Mortensen, and guess where it seems Jerry Jones got the idea? Here's what ESPN reporter tweeted a short time ago, "Jones emphasized NFL game ops manual several times and then this. You know, who reminded me about the game ops policy? Donald Trump." Mr. Jones' admission comes a couple weeks after he joined the Cowboys kneeling before the anthem at a Monday night football game. They ended up standing once the flag was displayed. Back now with the panel. Joining the conversation, CNN chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. So, Jeff, legally can employers tell their employees not to do something which they feel expresses their right to free of speech?</s>JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. The constitution, the 1st Amendment, only applies to the government. The government cannot punish you. They can't throw you in jail for expressing your opinions of any kind. But the 1st Amendment does not apply to private employers. Private employers can fire you for exercising your 1st Amendment. Just today, an ESPN analyst was suspended for two weeks for expressing her views about the current situation.</s>COOPER: Jemele Hill.</s>TOOBIN: Jemele Hill. You and I could be fired from CNN if we start endorsing candidates. I mean that is a -- you know, a power that employers have in the United States. The only issue in the NFL situation is there's a collective bargaining agreement between the union and the NFL. And there may be some provisions in there that the players could argue that it would be an unfair act by the employer, but I think by in large, it is clear here that Jerry Jones, if he wants to, could fire or suspend players who wouldn't stand up.</s>COOPER: Van, there's a chapter in our new book, and the chapter, it's an open letter to conservatives and you say, "More than anything you place great value on protecting and upholding the foundational liberties enshrined in the constitution particularly the right to free speech, movement, association and religion." Those conservative principles, how did they square with opposition to taking a knee?</s>JONES: Look, I think that the conservative movement has some real trouble and I -- I wrote this book, you know, "Beyond The Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together," trying to figure out how we can better Republicans and better Democrats. I think we need two strong parties. The conservative movement now seems to be an anti-liberal movement. It's much more interested in figuring out ways to poke at liberals than to actually lift up values that the country can actually be united around. There's really a huge missed opportunity here. The Republican Party, everybody's forgotten this now, has been leading the charge on criminal justice reform. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, closed prisons and brought crime down. Governor Diel in Georgia closed prisons, brought crime down. Kasich in Ohio, big criminal justice reformer. This is their issue. They've thrown it in the garbage can because they want to do cultural war nonsense. And it is completely outside of any national policy to lift the country up. You could say to these young people, I mean don't forget. When you talk about these football players are coming from neighborhoods that are still struggling. They're doing well maybe the past couple of years. Their families are not. You could say, listen, I want to talk about not the people who are kneeling or standing, but the people falling down in this country, who are falling down because they don't have jobs, they're fall doing down because they're afraid of what's going on in their neighborhoods. And I have to look beyond your symbols and deal with the substance because I have conservative values that can help you. They're missing that opportunity because they'd rather do this nonsense and that's the tragedy I see.</s>LEWIS: What he said. I agree with everything you just said, but, you know, Jerry Jones, and I'm a Redskins fan, so very hard for me to say something good about this man. But as you mentioned, he is the owner. You know, in the NFL right now, you can't celebrate in the end zone, right? If I want -- you know, if Tom Brady wanted to wear, like, an NRA sticker on his helmet, he couldn't do that. You know, that would be banned. The New York Yankees, I don't think you can have facial hair, right? Like you can't have long side burns or a goatee. That's their policy. And I actually like this. I think we need to get back to more sort of old guys, old women, old people, whoever, like basically saying, no, that's not who we are. You know, it used to been an editor like in a newspaper would be like, we're not going to cover that story, because we're not going to cover Twitter. It's junk. Now, we don't have that anymore. So I kind of think this is a --I'll say one, the first good thing I've ever said about Jerry Jones, I think it's a moment of leadership and, in fact, in the Arizona game, the other week, he did go out with his team and kneel in solidarity, not during the national anthem.</s>HABERMAN: I guess my question is, though, most people took the kneeling when he did it the first time as if it was in solidarity with what the players were doing about the national anthem even though it wasn't then. What I find notable about this is the president has been looking for an NFL owner to agree with him. I mean he's been pushing this for a while, this is what the team owners should be doing. And now he has one who seems to be going in that direction. I guess it's a little surprising to me to hear people supporting a president telling private enterprise how they should run their private enterprise. And that is how this is going.</s>COOPER: The idea of going back to, like the olden days when things weren't covered, I mean, I hear that and think there's a lot, you know, the evening news used to be what, 15, 18 minutes and everybody on it was white and all the stuff that got covered was --</s>HABERMAN: Very few women.</s>COOPER: Right. Was a very limited views of what was actually happening in the world. And so, I actually think the idea -- I think for a lot of people in America, the idea of going back to the good old days, they weren't that good for --</s>LEWIS: I think there were some bad aspects to the way things used to be done and we've made progress on that, and I think we've also gone in the wrong direction in some ways.</s>POWERS: You're saying that they should be able to, you know, decide this is not w ho we are to the owner could say that. And I don't know, maybe you're one of the conservatives who had a different position on this but there was a big case with a man named Brendan Eich at Mozilla who was fired because he had given money to an anti- same-sex marriage initiative and he lost his job. And Mozilla said that's not who are we. And conservatives went insane.</s>LEWIS: They have the right to do that.</s>POWERS: No. The conservatives said that that wasn't OK, that was an infringement, he should be able to express that. So I don't know why he was able to express that but then these players should --</s>COOPER: We have to take a break because we're out of time. But I want to thank everybody. Coming up, the real housewives of the West Wing. The president's ex- wide and current wife spar over who's the first lady. Joining me next, the only person for this job, experts on all things reality TV, Bravo's Andy Cohen.