The owner of the Philadelphia Eagles has called the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and protests of police brutality a “tragic embarrassment.”
Jeffrey Lurie, the 68-year-old NFL team owner, said systemic racism is one of the U.S.’s two “pandemics” that won’t change until we “realize we’re responsible for it.”
“Now, systemic racism, it’s our legacy,” he said during his annual State of the Eagles address. “When you write back on the 400 years of the United States, there’s a lot of wonderful, wonderful things that have taken place in our country, and we can all be proud of it.
“We can all love our country, but to love our country is to own our country, and that’s where I really believe strongly that we have to own the good and own the bad, and we won’t be able to change the bad until we realize we’re responsible for it.”
Lurie, who has owned the Eagles since 1994, didn’t specifically name Donald Trump in his address, but he was clear about his critiques of the government.
“We have to own the questions of leadership, we have to own the questions of policy, and there’s a lot to be discussed here on that in the future. That’s the reality I think we face. I’d rather just say it straight out from my heart -It’s heartbreaking,” he said.
He called the lives lost from COVID-19 “needless deaths” and said the U.S. “should be similar to most countries on the planet, and yet, we are an embarrassment, and a tragic embarrassment.”
As of Monday, the U.S. reached over six million cases and 183,000 deaths.
