Former NFL punter and Huntington Beach resident Chris Kluwe was arrested while protesting at a city council meeting, likening Donald Trump’s MAGA movement to the Nazi Party.
The 43-year-old Minnesota Vikings veteran attended a Huntington Beach City Council meeting on Tuesday to challenge the erection of a commemorative plaque celebrating the city library’s 50th anniversary, decrying it as “propaganda.”
According to the city’s arrest log, Kluwe was arrested for disturbing an assembly after moving toward the dais where City Council members sat.
The pro football punter was in the custody of the city jail for four hours before being released, he told The Orange County Register.
The sign, which the City Council unanimously approved, has “Magical,” “Alluring,” “Galvanizing,” and “Adventurous” inscribed at the bottom — spelling out MAGA.
Combining slogans of former presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and incumbent President Trump, below that reads: “Through hope and change our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!”
Kluwe shared his furor over the apparent nod to Trump and wanted to make clear to the councilors what he believed the president’s movement stood for.
“MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism,” Kluwe said. “MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing.”
After naming four other things Trump’s movement stands for, Kluwe concluded: “MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.”
He was detained as he approached the platform where members of the council were seated before being handcuffed and carried out of the room.
“I made sure I warned the officers I was going to the ground,” Kluwe told the Daily Pilot. “Then I told them, ‘I’m going to stay limp, you guys got to carry me out of here.’”
City Council member Gracey Van Der Mark told the outlet that she believed that Kluwe was after his “five minutes of fame.”
However, Kluwe, explained that his actions were a form of protest — what he calls “civil disobedience” — in an attempt to raise awareness of the MAGA movement’s purportedly clandestine activity and enact change.
“I want our elected democratic officials to start engaging in civil disobedience,” he continued.
“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.”
