Former NFL player Chris Kluwe was arrested Tuesday for protesting a MAGA plaque at public library in Huntington Beach, California.
The ex-Minnesota Vikings punter had to be carried out of Huntington Beach City Council meeting following an impassioned speech in which the athlete-turned-activist called MAGA a “Nazi movement.”
“MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement,” Kluwe said as applause erupted in the room. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.”
Kluwe then calmly left his spot, telling city council members he was going to engage in a “time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience.”
After leaving the lectern and approaching the city council members’ bench, police quickly apprehended Kluwe. The former athlete was then literally carried by officers out of the building to the sound of applause.
The Huntington Beach Public Library, in the heart of a conservative beach town just south of liberal Los Angeles, is moving forward with a plaque that spells out “M-A-G-A.” Ostensibly, the words stand for "Magical,” “Alluring,” “Galvanizing,” and “Adventurous,” but the sentence that follows makes it clear this wasn’t a coincidence.
“Through hope and change our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!” the plaque reads.
The use of the phrases “hope and change” and “built back better” in this context may also be a digs at former President Barack Obama’s campaign slogan and former President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, respectively.
Elsewhere in his speech, Kluwe also referred to many controversial things that happened in the White House in the first month of President Donald Trump’s new administration, including its many executive orders targeting the transgender and LGBTQ+ community.
He also referenced prominent airline crashes as Trump slashes aviation safety jobs.
In his statement, Kluwe adds, “MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the [Department of Veterans Affairs], including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children.”
Kluwe—who claims he was fired from the NFL for his outspoken support of same-sex marriage, which was federally illegal at the time—was reportedly held in jail for roughly four hours before being released.
“I made sure I warned the officers I was going to the ground,” Kluwe said in an interview with The Daily Pilot on Wednesday. “Then I told them, ‘I’m going to stay limp, you guys got to carry me out of here.’”
“People need to be aware that what’s going on with this administration is leading us down a really dark path,” he told the outlet. “Right now, no one is willing to step up and do that. So, if I want to ask them to do it, then I have to be willing to do it too.”
City council member Gracey Van Der Mark
City council member Gracey Van Der Mark told The Daily Pilot that Kluwe's actions were an insult to Jewish people who support Trump. She also called Huntington Beach a "beautiful conservative city."
“We respect everyone. We’re not out there attacking people who don’t think like us, we’re not out there running across and trying to intimidate people who don’t agree with us,” she said, adding, “The city of Huntington Beach has always been conservative, and they tried to change that, and we’re just taking it back to the way it was. If I wanted to live in a liberal city with liberal values, I would have stayed in Los Angeles.”
Kluwe is but one example of the growing unrest across the country as protesters take to city halls and freeways to protest the actions of the White House, Elon Musk, and immigration authorities.
On Feb. 17, people across the country took to the streets to show that Presidents Day was a day of anger and disdain for the current administration.
About two weeks earlier, thousands of protesters shut down a major freeway in Los Angeles to protest Trump’s deportation of undocumented immigrants. Similar protests in Dallas occurred, with an estimated 1,600 protesters standing up against Trump’s administration.
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