Limbaugh: Betsy Ross shirts raise $1.5 million – so far!

When former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick persuaded Nike to stop production of a sneaker with the Betsy Ross flag, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh saw the potential for something positive to arise from the controversy.

Today he announced the Betsy Ross T-shirts he’s been selling have raised $1.5 million for the Tunnels to Towers charity, which provides homes and assistance for injured veterans and first responders.

“We go back to the day, Fourth of July, around the Fourth of July, when Colin Kaepernick objected to the new Betsy Ross tennis shoes that Nike was gonna sell,” Limbaugh told his listeners. “And then Nike immediately cancels them. Now, I think immediately that there’s some kind of a PR hoax going on here, PR stunt. I’m not sure how many of those shoes they actually made, and this allowed Kaepernick to earn what Nike is paying him by appearing to be relevant.

“So he complains and whines and moans because Betsy Ross represents the slave and racist founding of America and the flag offended Colin Kaepernick. And so Nike, oh, we can’t have anything offending Kaepernick. So they proudly announced they are canceling the shoe!

“Well, that makes me mad. I’m sorry, but people dumping all over founding symbols, the founding of this country, irritates me, and particularly if they’re doing it for personal or financial gain, which Nike and Kaepernick were doing. So we have the RushLimbaugh.com store. We’ve revitalized it, we’ve modernized it, and we’ve restocked it and I got hold of my wife, Kathryn, and I said, ‘How quickly could we do a turnaround on a shirt bouncing off of this?'”

It turned out to be only days.

The shirt was announced and “the orders started coming in like crazy,” he said.

“We announced a charitable tie-in because we didn’t want anybody to think that we were personally profiting or that the business, the EIB Network was profiting off of this. So we announced a tie-in with the Tunnel to Towers charity, which helps people who have been injured in war, who have been injured in the first response to 9/11, families of 9/11 victims.”

He noted that every year some 50,000 T-shirts for the Super Bowl champion are sold over a period of months.

“In 11 days, because of you and the audience at Fox News – you people continue to do extraordinary things – in just 11 days, we have zoomed past 100,000 T-shirts, and there were 14,000 new orders so far today,” he said Friday.

“The amount of money that we have cleared after expenses and so forth that we are able to donate to Tunnel to Towers is $1.5 million.”

“We’ve had to reorder again today, we were sold-out. I mean, you don’t know this ’cause the store doesn’t reflect it. We were sold out in three of the five sizes shortly after opening for business today,” he noted.

The Fox television affiliate in Nashville, Tennessee, reported the Coalition of African-American Pastors said the solution to the Kaepernick fracas is simple: Nike should end its relationship with the former NFL quarterback.

The pastors said to Nike: “We urge you to make it clear that you respect the American flag, its people, and its Founders. We ask that you sever your relationship with Mr. Kaepernick, who has become synonymous with radical anti-American sentiment. And we ask that you make amends to veterans by producing a select run of the Besty Ross shoes for the benefit of veterans groups and organizations that help military families.”

The fallout of Kaepernick’s activism has included Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s decision to order the Arizona Commerce Authority to withdraw incentives for Nike to build a manufacturing plant in the state.

But he took the quote out of context, completely changing its meaning.

Kaepernick quoted Douglass saying: “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine… There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pointed out the speech was given in 1852, when slavery still existed. Douglass concluded the speech saying: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.”

Kaepernick launched the national-anthem protest movement in the NFL, which he said was in protest of police officers killing unarmed black men.

He was unable to sign a new contract and eventually settled a lawsuit against the league alleging owners conspired against him.

Source: Wnd.com

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