Bruce Maxwell’s kneel-down just made a huge mess for Donald Trump

| 11:20 pm EDT September 23, 2017
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Who is Bruce Maxwell? That’s probably what Donald Trump is googling right now, after the not-particularly-famous catcher for the Oakland A’s became the first Major League Baseball player to take a knee during the National Anthem on Saturday night. This was, rather clearly, in direct response to Trump’s attacks on NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and NBA star Steph Curry. The particular circumstances behind Maxwell’s kneel-down just made a huge mess for Trump.

For starters, this was the first instance of a professional athlete taking a knee in direct defiance of Trump’s demand that they not take a knee. From there it gets even messier for Trump. Bruce Maxwell is of mixed ethnicity and is part African-American, according to USA Today (link). But his physical appearance is such that numerous people on social media have mistakenly pegged him as a white guy. There’s a good chance Trump will do the same. As Trump only likes to pick fights with sports figures who are black, he may end up staying silent on Maxwell based on his own mistaken assumptions. But it gets more complicated.

Maxwell was born on a U.S. military base, because his father was active duty military. So if Trump wants to keep pushing the rationale that taking a knee is disrespectful to the military, he’s going to have a problem selling it in this instance. Further, Maxwell is from Alabama – the same state in which Trump was speaking when he called Kaepernick a “son of a bitch.” So much for Trump’s seeming belief that everyone from places like Alabama is on his side. There’s one more complicating factor here.

While Bruce Maxwell was taking a knee during the anthem, one of his white teammates made a point of putting his hand on Maxwell’s shoulder in a show of solidarity. So even if Donald Trump figures out that Maxwell is part black and decides to attack him, he’ll have a hard time selling it to white moderates.