FACT CHECK: Did Tom Brady Say, ‘If Anybody On This Team Kneels, I Walk’?

Trevor Schakohl | Legal Reporter

A post shared on Facebook claims Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady said, “If anybody on this team kneels, I walk.”

Verdict: False

There is no record of Brady making the comment. It comes from an article published on a satire website.

Fact Check:

Brady signed a two-year contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in March, Sports Illustrated reported. Prior to joining the Buccaneers, he won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, according to The New York Times.

A post shared on Facebook alleges Brady threatened to quit if his teammates knelt during the national anthem. (RELATED: Did Kansas City Chiefs Owner Clark Hunt Say He Would ‘Immediately Fire’ Players And Staff Who Don’t Stand For The National Anthem?)

“It’s a disgrace and, as far as I’m concerned, an act of treason,” the post quotes Brady as saying. “I won’t stand for it. I won’t stand for your kneeling. Let me be perfectly clear, if anybody on this team kneels, I will walk. I will be off the field and out the door in an instant.”

There is, however, no record of Brady saying the quote attributed to him in the Facebook post. The statement doesn’t appear on any of his social media pages, and the Daily Caller didn’t find any credible media reports quoting him as saying it.

The quote appears to contradict what Brady has previously said about players kneeling during the national anthem, further adding to the attribution’s dubiousness.

“I respect why people are doing what they’re doing, and they’re doing it for different reasons, and that’s OK,” Brady told Oprah Winfrey in a June 2018 interview. “You can do things for your reasons, they can do things for their reasons, and you have respect for that. But I thought it was great.”

The statement circulating on Facebook comes from an article published by America’s Last Line of Defense, a parody news website that describes itself as part of a network that creates “parody, satire, and tomfoolery.” On its “About Us” page, America’s Last Line of Defense states, “Everything on this website is fiction.”

Trevor Schakohl

Legal Reporter
Follow Trevor on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/tschakohl

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