Ex-Viking Chris Kluwe arrested after protesting California city's ode to MAGA on library plaque
Published in Football
MINNEAPOLIS — A former Minnesota Viking is ruffling feathers again, this time lashing out at the Trump administration and City Council members in southern California until his arrest.
Chris Kluwe, who was a punter for the Vikings from 2005 to 2012, took the podium at the council meeting Tuesday in his home city of Huntington Beach in opposition to a plaque that was changed to include an ode to President Donald Trump.
Added to the design were the words Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing, Adventurous. They construct the same acronym as Trump’s signature campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, or MAGA.
The plaque was approved to go on the city’s central library in honor of the library system’s 50th anniversary.
“I’m here to speak out against both the plaque and the current City Council,” the 43-year-old Kluwe began.
He then went on to roll out a long list of what he believes MAGA stands for, including “resegregation and racism … censorship and book bans … firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling a research on veteran suicide.”
But the comment that raised the biggest ruckus was that “MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.”
He then left the podium in what he called “the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” and went to the floor. Several police officers moved in, arrested Kluwe and led him out of the council chamber.
Kluwe told the Orange County Register he was released around four hours after his arrest on a misdemeanor count of disturbing an assembly.
In May 2013, the Vikings cut Kluwe, despite his averaging 45 yards per punt with a career-best 39.7 net average.
Skeptics of the move pointed to his heightened off-the-field profile and push to speak out on national TV about societal issues — most notably gay rights and marriage equality. However, the team’s front office insisted the decision was strictly about football.
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