Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has joined a chorus of right-wing voices outraged at Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, suggesting that rapper Eminem should abandon the US for taking the knee during his performance.
Speaking on his radio programme as much of the US reflected rapturously on the show, Mr Giuliani complained that Eminem insulted law enforcement by kneeling on stage – a widely adopted gesture used in sport to acknowledge the US’s persistent realities of racism and racial violence.
"Let’s get right to Eminem taking a knee,” Mr Giuliani. “Why doesn’t he go to another country? I mean, go take a knee someplace else. You know how many cops were defending him and protecting him at that game yesterday?”
According to the former New York mayor, the NFL too has “made a mockery of law enforcement” by allowing Eminem to take the knee without sanction.
Mr Giuliani himself is facing multiple problems with law enforcement in the form of a federal investigation into whether he broke a law governing lobbying on behalf of foreign clients. He is also the target of a billion-dollar-plus lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over his persistent lying about its supposed role in helping “steal” the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
The halftime show was widely celebrated as one of the Super Bowl’s best ever, but not on the right. Other conservatives and right-wing commentators who took exception included Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, who declared after the performance that the NFL had become “the league of sexual anarchy”.
Mr Giuliani’s fellow Trumpworld veteran Sean Spicer, meanwhile, simply asked: “Dear @NFL / @pepsi, What was the message of the #HalfTimeShow?”
