Former NFL player Colin Kaepernick and former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are both cult heroes on the Left. But apparently, the late justice did not view Kaepernick’s antics through the same rose-colored glasses of many of her ideological allies.
Back in 2016, Ginsburg said in an interview with former Today host Katie Couric that Kaepernick’s protests were “dumb and disrespectful” and athletes should be free to protest even if “they want to be arrogant.” But Couric, who has chopped up segments in the past to promote specific narratives, cut some of Ginsburg’s other comments.
Ginsburg apparently also said the protests showed a “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life, which they probably could not have lived in the places they came from. … As they became older, they realize that this was youthful folly. And that’s why education is important.”
Unsurprisingly, the justice revered by the Left for her scathing dissents likely won’t get many plaudits for this one.
But Ginsburg is right about Kaepernick, the apologist for cop killers and Cuban communists who gave up a middling NFL career for a massive Nike deal. Not only were his protests dumb and disrespectful, especially considering how out of depth he was on the issue he claimed was important to him, but the contempt he showed for the country that made his NFL career and lucrative endorsement deals possible was egregious.
Kaepernick’s fundamental problem was always his hatred of the United States. He stated from the outset that he was protesting the flag and the national anthem because he didn’t respect the country. That, of course, came from his uneducated view of systemic racism, which led to him comparing police officers to slave patrols and calling for the institution of policing to be abolished.
The support for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and mourning of Iranian terrorist Qassem Soleimani that followed may have been a bit on the nose, but his message was clear: Kaepernick despises America and what it stands for.
Ginsburg was right back in 2016, and her newly revealed comments have certainly aged well. Kaepernick was a disgrace from the beginning, and anyone without blinders on could see it.
