Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg took President Trump to task over his rebuke of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee during the national anthem.
“The way I feel about it is the flag that was on my shoulder when I served represented, among other things, our right to free speech,” said Buttigieg in a recent interview with TMZ Sports.
“If the president had served, maybe he’d feel a little more strongly about some of those freedoms,” said the Navy veteran in New York.
Buttigieg says gets that there’s a lot of “strong opinions about this, but that’s part of why we served.”
This wasn’t the first time the presidential contender has voiced an opinion about the NFL players taking a knee. He began tweeting about it in 2017, a year after Kaepernick began the social justice protest against police brutality.
Back then, Buttigieg said he served in the military so citizens can have the freedom to “protest injustice.” That is the “whole point of the anthem, the flag, and the country,” he added in a 2017 tweet.
Trump had called for players to be fired for taking a knee during the national anthem. The president, more recently, mocked Buttigieg’s surname, overly enunciating the candidate’s suggested pronunciation “Boot Edge Edge.” Buttigieg is of Maltese descent.
