Former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe was arrested Tuesday night after he took to the podium during a Huntington Beach City Council meeting and laid into U.S. President Donald Trump, his supporters and a plaque that’s set to be installed at a local library.
The plaque in question, a piece approved by city council, features the words “Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing and Adventurous” and the California city’s commission confirmed it was a reference to Trump’s Make American Great Again (MAGA) movement.
“Through hope and change our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!” the sign also says.
The plaque that has generated all the controversy.
Huntington Beach City Council
“MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement,” Kluwe, who punted for eight seasons with the Vikings, said. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that’s what it is.”
He ran through a list of grievances against Trump and his administration, calling out many of the executive orders the president has signed since taking office for the second time.
“MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for re-segregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans,” Kluwe told those in council, to applause and cheers.
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“MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including cancelling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children.”
He then said he would “engage in the time-honoured American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” and walked on to the meeting’s stage.
Video from the incident then showed police officers handcuffing a face-down Kluwe on the stage before three officers carried him out of the room.
In an interview with the Orange County Register, Kluwe revealed that he was detained for four hours before being released.
Kluwe, 43, was charged with disrupting the assembly.
On Wednesday, Kluwe told local publication Daily Pilot that he wanted other “democratic elected officials” to follow him.
“I want our elected democratic officials to start engaging in civil disobedience,” he told the outlet. “People need to be aware that what’s going on with this administration is leading us down a really dark path. 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.”
He also expressed disappointment in the members of council.
“People are speaking out because that’s the American thing to do,” he said. “You’re a public citizen, your voice should be heard. But it’s very disheartening when your elected officials are not listening to your voice…
“It is profoundly un-American to do what this council is doing, and I think there are a lot of people in this community that get that. At a very visceral level, what we are seeing is not how America is supposed to work.”
According to The Guardian, all seven members of Huntington Beach city council are conservatives.
For years, Kluwe has been an outspoken supporter and ally for LGBTQ+ rights and same-sex marriage. In the past, he’s claimed he was released from the Vikings because of his beliefs.
In 2016, he wrote a scathing open letter to Trump on Vox, chastising him for his “incredible demeaning comments about women” and refuting Trump’s claims that it was just “locker room talk.”
“You’re wrong, and only the type of wrong an over-tanned ham hock like yourself can accomplish, plummeting past the morass of gross incivility into the abyss of depraved sociopathy,” Kluwe wrote.
