JONATHAN CAPEHART (MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR): Well, Katy, this question of free speech, especially in cases like this, drive me bananas. Because people want free speech only, it seems, when they can denigrate, belittle someone who isn't like them. And the moment someone exercises their free speech that offends them, then oh my god, something must be done about them. When you read the comment from the Fox News anchor claiming, “oh, this is free speech,” you know who I thought of? Colin Kaepernick.
MARK THOMPSON (RADIO TALK SHOW HOST): Thank you.
CAPEHART: Colin Kaepernick first was sitting on the bench to protest police brutality, a very real issue that the country should have been talking about then and should still be talking about today. A former green beret and at the time a player at the NFL, Nate Boyer with the Seattle Seahawks, wrote an open letter to Colin Kaepernick saying, “You know what, your sitting on the bench offends me as a member of the military and I would like for you to reconsider.” The two of them met, and because of that veteran -- because Colin Kaepernick had an open heart and an open mind sat down with this person, and there it was Boyer, this veteran, who said to him, “Here's what you can do in order to exercise your free speech and not offend members of the military, and that is kneel, which is something that members of the military do to honor the fallen.”
So Colin Kaepernick does this, and then engenders the ire of the president of the United States who denigrates him in racial terms, uses it as a way to gin up his rally crowds and to gin up the base, uses it to bully -- I don't know if it's actually bullying -- NFL owners who crumbled under the pressure from the president to, one, keep Colin Kaepernick from ever working again, but two, institute this insane anthem rule. Where is Colin Kaepernick's free speech?
