Super Bowl 2020: Wendy Williams Slams Beyonce and Jay-Z for Sitting During National Anthem

Wendy Williams is taking issue with Beyonce and Jay-Z’s decision to remain seated during Super Bowl LIV Sunday in Miami as Demi Lovato performed the National Anthem. While Williams might be a big fan of both Bey and Hov, the talk show host questioned during The Wendy Williams Show Monday if the moment of what appeared to be protest meant the couple was unpatriotic.

“I don’t know about you, and our country may be in a bad way, but there’s no place I’d rather live than in America,” Williams said, reasoning that as Jay’s Roc Nation signed a deal with the NFL in August designed to ensure more diverse acts for the Super Bowl, he should have been standing for the Anthem.

“Jay, you might be an NFL owner, but you don’t own all of the NFL,” Williams said, incorrectly referring to the rapper as an owner instead of as a partner. “And Beyonce, I love my Ivy Park, [but] you understand that all eyes were on you, you should have stood up.”

Neither Beyonce nor Jay-Z have addressed their decision to remain seated, but it was largely assumed to be a move in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, whose decision to take a knee during the anthem 2016 to bring awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement effectively ended his career in the NFL.

When Jay-Z was criticized for signing on with the NFL in August, he defended the partnership, saying, “We forget that Colin’s whole thing was to bring attention to social injustice. In that case, this is a success. This is the next phase. There [are] two parts of protesting. You go outside and you protest, and then the company or individual says, ‘I hear you. What do we do next?’”

The Carters’ moment Sunday appears not to have hit home with Kaepernick or girlfriend Nessa Diab, both of whom reposted an Instagram Story from Miko Grimes, wife of Tampa Bay Buccaneers player Brent Grimes showing a TMZ headline about the couple sitting during the anthem and the line, “I thought we were ‘past kneeling’ tho?”

Photo credit: Kevin Mazur / Contributor, Getty