Chris Long Fights Back Against Twitter Criticisms Of His Decision To Skip Visit To Donald Trump's White House
BOSTON (CBS) -- Chris Long is pretty famous. An All-American in college, son of a Pro Football Hall of Famer, first-round draft pick, nine-year veteran, and now a Super Bowl champion. People know him.
And so, with his list of Twitter followers nearing the quarter-million mark, he gets quite a few critics sending comments his way. In the wake of his announcement that he won't be attending the Patriots' trip to the White House to be congratulated by President Donald Trump, those critics have popped up a bit more often.
While he can't reply to all of them, he did respond to one person on Thursday night. And it clearly got him thinking, as he started to go one-by-one to tear down every argument and criticism made against him.
Here's what he had to say.
Long admitted that the critics don't represent the majority of the people who reach out to him. But clearly, there was some pent-up aggravation.
Long's initial announcement came after a columnist wrote an open letter to him, saying he could not go to the White House or else he'd be a hypocrite.
"Some super preachy mega-liberal guy was like, 'Hey, here's an open letter to you, explaining your own thinking,'" Long said last week on the podcast Pardon My Take. "The guy sent me an outline of my own quotes and what it means. He was like, 'Well you need to follow your teammates now.' And I was like, 'OK, I wanted to wait to [announce it], but this guy's pulling the lib card on me hard. Like, you want to have a lib-off, bro?"
Long's major charity endeavor involves work with The Waterboys, a group that works to provide clean drinking water to communities in Africa. Former football player and U.S. Army Green Beret Nate Boyer is also involved, and the group has worked to provide support to veterans.
Long is one of six Patriots players who have stated they would not be attending the White House, but he's the first to offer such a vociferous defense of his decision.
