More than 11 months after Donald Trump was elected the country's 45th president, segments of the glitterati still do not understand how a bloviating, untamable, politically incorrect businessman can be so popular among some segments of the population.
Health care reform has gone down the tubes, travel bans have been rebuked and a tax reform plan looks dubious, all despite a Congress supposedly on his side.
But, as an ESPN pundit said this week about the president's foray into the football wars, "Trump has won this round."
What is the president of the United States, who should be working behind the scenes on immigration reform or figuring out a way to reduce entitlement spending, doing smack in the middle of a freedom of expression issue involving National Football League players kneeling during the national anthem?
Winning.
Indeed, the issue became such a thorn for the NFL that Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a letter to team owners Tuesday that indicated he believed the players should stand for the anthem.
"It's is an important moment in our game," he wrote. "We want to honor the flag and our country, and our fans expect that of us."
The league is clearly losing the public relations war.
The Washington-based Winston Group recently revealed that professional football has fallen to "the least liked of top professional and college sports." Its favorability rating fell from 57 percent in August to 44 percent in September, and in the target market of males ages 34 to 54 it fell from 73 percent to 42 percent.
Another poll showed nearly a third of NFL fans were watching less, with half of them blaming the national anthem protests.
DirecTV has even offered disgruntled fans a full refund of their NFL "Sunday Ticket" packages.
The most recent Sunday night and Monday night games both hit season lows in television ratings, and overall ratings of the sport have declined around 10 percent over last year.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who took a knee in solidarity with his players two weeks ago, beat the league in realizing the game had a problem. Earlier this week, he threatened to bench any players who kneel during the anthem.
"If we are disrespecting the flag, then we won't play," he said. "Period."
Before Goodell's letter, which is to be discussed at an upcoming owners meeting, the NFL Players Association made a stand for kneeling.
"We should not stifle these discussions," it said, "and cannot allow our rights to become subservient to the very opinions our Constitution protects. That is what makes us the land of the free and home of the brave."
Fans, though, remember the NFL is the same league that threatened to fine players who wanted to wear cleats to commemorate 9/11, that prevented the Cowboys from wearing a decal to honor five Dallas police officers killed in the line of duty, that didn't want a player to wear purple cleats to raise awareness for domestic violence and fined another one for wearing green cleats to raise awareness for mental health disorders, that forced a player to turn inside-out a T-shirt that said "Know Jesus Know Peace" for a post-game press conference, and that made former quarterback Tim Tebow remove eye black bearing the words John 3:16.
So much for the "land of the free."
Meanwhile, the aforementioned ESPN pundit, "First Take" host Stephen A. Smith, said, "The president has successfully gone about the business of hijacking the issue."
We don't necessarily agree because one man's protest against police brutality - statistics on which actually belie protested claims - is another's man lack of patriotism. But Trump's certainly exploited it.
Yet, that exploitation is music to the ears of many of his supporters because his voiced display of patriotism matches theirs and because they see him fighting back where many in his party appear timid or compromising.
They've just lived through eight years of a president apologizing for the country, appearing not to have respect for the country's military might and governing against the will of a majority of the people.
So a strong voice resonated. Without Trump big-footing the controversy, we don't believe the NFL commissioner's letter ever would be written.
The noose grew tighter around the league this weekend when Vice President Mike Pence - a former Indiana congressman and governor - and his wife walked out of the Indianapolis Colts football game when players knelt during the national anthem. The president later said he'd made the suggestion.
Then, much to the delight of TrumpWorld, an ESPN columnist who called the president a "white supremacist" and suggested Cowboys' advertisers should be boycotted because of Jones' threats, was suspended.
The once strictly-sports network, already abandoned by many conservative viewers because of its left-leaning commentary, was threatened with a backlash from liberals, who support the columnist's viewpoints.
Trump, never one to let a tiff involving him go, was only too happy to tweet in reference to the columnist that "it is no wonder ESPN ratings have 'tanked,' in fact, tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry."
So, it's a public relations win for a president who is buffeted - often without provocation - by the opposition party and the national media, but we hope for more. The PR win may work for now, but the NFL is a long season. By February, when the Super Bowl is behind us and the administration is a year old, such victories may not be enough.