WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to use federal tax law to penalize the National Football League over players who kneel in protest during the national anthem.
Trump tweeted: "Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!"
The tax break for the NFL was a point of controversy for years, but it applied only to the central office, not the league's 32 teams, which pay taxes as for-profit organizations. The NFL voluntarily gave up the tax exemption for its league office in 2015, calling it a "distraction," and it now files tax returns as a taxable entity.
It is not clear that the change cost the league much money. While the league as a whole generates billions of dollars in revenue a year, the league office ran a deficit of $13.5 million in the fiscal year that ended a year before the decision to give up the tax-exempt status.
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The change in status meant that the league no longer had to disclose what it paid its commissioner, Roger Goodell. His last reported salary in 2014 was $4 million, though bonuses and other benefits that year raised his total pay to $34.1 million.
Last month, after the kneeling controversy began, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced legislation to strip all professional sports leagues of tax-exempt status, an idea that has been proposed on Capitol Hill for years.
Joe Lockhart, the NFL spokesman, was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.
Trump also tweeted Tuesday that ESPN ratings have "tanked" because of now-suspended anchor Jemele Hill -- "in fact, tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry!"
While NFL viewership is down slightly, ESPN remains among the most popular cable networks, averaging 3 million viewers in prime time. The network has suffered subscriber losses over the past few years as some viewers have moved to streaming services from cable television.
Hill, a black co-host of the 6 p.m. broadcast of SportsCenter, received backlash last month after calling Trump a "white supremacist" in a series of tweets that referred to the president's comments about a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
That comment prompted Trump to demand an apology from ESPN and led White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to call for Hill's firing.
While ESPN took no formal action against Hill over the Trump comment, she did apologize to the network for the trouble her remarks had caused while standing by the tweets. ESPN cited that apology in announcing Hill's suspension Monday, saying in a statement that ESPN employees had been "reminded of how individual tweets may reflect negatively on ESPN and that such actions would have consequences."
Hill targeted Jerry Jones on Twitter on Sunday after the Dallas Cowboys owner stated that players who disrespect the flag would not play for his team.
She suggested that fans who disagree with Jones should boycott the team's advertisers and not buy the team's merchandise.
She clarified Monday that she wasn't calling for an NFL boycott.
Information for this article was contributed by Peter Baker of The New York Times and by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/11/2017