Ben Shapiro Questions Colin Kaepernick’s Motives

I like Kaepernick thing. All right. Don't you think that at least some good has come out of him doing that where it sort of raised awareness for police brutality? Just put it to the forefront. Let people understand that this is a problem. No. Not at all? No, because I think that he made a serious error, which is that the most positive movements in American social history have been ones that don't kneel for the flag, but say in the name of the flag, you should do X. Right? So Martin Luther King said, in the name of the flag, civil rights are necessary. Booker T. Washington said, in the name of the flag, civil rights are necessary. They didn't say the American flag stands for racism and Jim Crow. They said the American flag stands for something beyond that, live up to the American flag. But here's my question. Trashing the American flag is like endemic of police brutality. First of all, it's bullshit. But second of all, it's actually divisive on an issue that does not need to be divisive. Like nobody is in favor of police brutality, nor should anyone be. Right. Here's the counterpoint. Why is it trashing the American flag to take a knee? Isn't that in some ways just another gesture of respect? Like you are not doing what everybody wants you to do, which is put your hand over your heart, but you're doing something that's also respectful and silent. You're not standing up and going fuck the American flag. Fuck these people. You're actually taking it to another level of respect. You're taking a knee. You're bending the knee. Whether you're doing it for something that you want to talk about later, saying I'm not going to stand up because this is my way of acknowledging the fact that there have been a lot of people that have been mistreated by police and murdered by police. And this is how I do it. This is how I treat racist police, killing black people. I take that moment to take a knee. Like how is that so disrespectful? Like how is that any it's a just a silent gesture. It's not uniform. Like it's not doing this thing that everybody else is doing, but you're doing something that's very respectful. You're taking a knee. Well, that's certainly not the way that he intended when it first started that way. I mean, if you want to interpret that way, you can. How do you know what his intention was? Because he literally talked about it. I mean, he said that America is a. To highlight that. Right. But he said, America is a systemically racist country. He wore socks with pictures of cops as pigs on them. He wore. Oh, yeah. I didn't know. Oh, yeah. I mean, Colin Kaepernick is a terrible spokesperson for this moment. Like, again, like these are. There should be many people that have taken a knee. And don't you think that if you just look at the gesture itself, isn't taking a knee even more respectful than standing with your hand over your heart? I mean, then I imagine millions of us would routinely take a knee for the American flag. I mean, the idea of. If that was the thing you had to do. If the if the. But again, this guy decided to stand and put his hand over his heart. Really, it's just it's sort of a traditional thing where we're arguing over. Well, I mean, it isn't the way that it was originally expressed. It sort of morphed over time to the point where it doesn't necessarily mean what he originally meant to me. It's not like he's going, fuck you while everybody else has their hand over their heart in silence. But he's taking a knee. He did mean it as an FU. I mean, there's no question that's what he meant it as. And it wasn't even over something that actually made sense. Like you understand during the civil rights movement when people are raising the black power fist at the Olympics to say, like, we're fighting for civil rights. Jim Crow is still in operation around the country. Right. Colin Kaepernick taking the knee to symbolize that America's police are systemically brutal and racist is just it's factually untrue. And to attribute that to the American flag is really kind of nasty. But he's not a statistician, right? So he's looking at things like the Eric Gardner case or, you know, which is a terrible one. Right. There's there's cases that you see like when the guy's just selling loose cigarettes and a straight of course from the store. It's terrible case. You see something like that and that motivates him to do that. And I know what you're saying that these are anecdotes and this doesn't encompass the full statistics of cops versus black men and how what what is exactly is happening. But that's not his area of expertise anyway. He has he has an issue. I mean, I agree with that. So making him a spokesperson for a movement where he has no expertise is a weird thing to do. There are plenty of people who talk about this with actual statistical knowledge. But if you're a famous person and you decide to take this big stand publicly like that after you get bench for Blaine Gabbard. Yeah. If you get bench for Blaine Gabbard and take millions of bucks from a major corporation currently a plane is that the guy was a guy. Yeah. The immortal Blaine Gabbard, the Hall of Famer Blaine Gabbard who played like he's about no. Blaine Gabbard was an NFL quarterback who sucked. I mean, he was terrible and they they benched Colin Kaepernick for him. And it was after he got benched that he started doing the kneeling for the American flag. I am a pretty good gig sports broadcaster who knows nothing about sports. People try to talk to me about it. Jamie, let's put this. If you'd explain it the way that you're explaining it, meaning we're not living up to the American flag, which is why I'm kneeling. I wouldn't be arguing with it. He didn't explain it that way. That wasn't that wasn't the way it went down. But it's just him. What do you think about God? There's certain guys that like lock arms during the American. I never promise that. Okay. Locking arms. Okay. But kneeling is bad. Well, no. Well, the way that he characterized his kneeling was bad. Okay. But what about other people that kneel? If they characterize it differently, it means a different thing. Okay. Right. Meaning like what it originally was is what it was. I'm not going to retcon what he meant at the time. He was the first to do it. Right. Right. And then he and then he made millions of dollars for his bravery. And I don't think it takes a whole hell of a lot of bravery to be benched for Blaine Gabbard. Take a knee, make millions of bucks from Nike. I wish Blaine Gabbard fellow was terrible QB rating is all you really need to know. Not a good quarterback is the answer. So is Colin Kaepernick? I mean, I don't know as an athlete, is he not good? He's a terrific athlete. He's just not a very good quarterback. Okay. So I mean, he had one fantastic season. He led the 49ers to the Super Bowl. And then like a lot of kind of one hit wonders in sports, people kind of figured him out season two and his QB rating started to decline. But I mean, look, bottom line is that the making him the spokesperson of a movement where he really I don't like the idea that you are going to attribute to all of America a sin that is number one anecdotal in nature and number two cannot be attributed to America's highest ideals. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. I have an anecdote. You see them over and over again. The problem is they're so prevalent. There's so many videos. My friend Joe Shilling is a kickboxer and his entire Instagram has been dedicated to bad cops over the last few months just showing all these videos of bad cops. I mean yes it's anecdotal, but, God damn, there's a lot of anecdotes. Well, there's 330 million police interactions every year. What was the initial interaction that, what was his motivation to do that? Was there a single instance of police brutality that caused him to do that? I'm trying to remember which season he did this. This would have been three, four years ago. So I'm trying to remember. I don't think it was the Michael Brown situation, because I remember there were protests in the NFL over Michael Brown, which was actually a bad anecdote. Like that was a bad one for people to pick. People were doing the hands up, don't shoot, that didn't actually happen. He actually tried to grab the gun from the cop. The gun went off in the car, he charged the cop by witness testimony, all the witnesses were black. The Eric Garner one is much cleaner, right? Well, the Eric Garner one is cleaner in terms of police brutality. It's not super clean in terms of racism or even cause of death. So this is one of the problems. Yes, police brutality. Police brutality for sure. It's kind of like, it's actually, I'm warning people now that what happens in the George Floyd case with Derek Chauvin, like they should be warned up front. I want this police officer punished. I think everyone wants the police officer punished. The defense is going to make a case that the police officer is not responsible for George Floyd's death in exactly the same way that the New York police officers made the case that they were not responsible for Eric Garner's death. And the autopsy, the initial autopsy tends to support that. So what that suggests is not that Derek Chauvin is good or clean or decent, but if you're going to charge him with murder, that's a hard charge to make, just on a legal level. So I'm warning people now of that because the next move will be, obviously the system is racist if Derek Chauvin doesn't get convicted of first degree murder. It's going to be very hard to convict him, I think to charge him with second. It's going to be very difficult to convict him with second. You're going to have to be charged with second, right? Because at first would mean premeditated. Right. Well, he was charged with third originally, and then Keith Ellis and the AG over there elevated it to second degree. I think it's very difficult to make the case for second degree murder. What were you pulling up, Jamie? Something you want to say? I had the part of when this actually started in 2016. He started by sitting, and people started getting video of him sitting as the preseason was starting. So he then talked to a teammate. They discussed kneeling was the best thing for him to do at the time. Do you remember? Do you know which incident kind of kicked it off? That's why I was going to play a video of it. That's why I had here the actual first video of him talking about him donating a million dollars to the local community. I think he had guns drawn on him, which is probably what started. Okay. But here's him talking about that. And I've been very blessed to be in this position and be able to make the kind of money I do. And I have to help these people. I have to help these communities. It's not right that they're not put in the position to succeed or given those opportunities to succeed. And as far as taking a knee tonight, Eric, as well as myself, had a long conversation with Nate Boyer, who is a military vet. And we were talking to him about how can we get the message back on track? And not take away from the military, not take away from pride in our country, but keep the focus on what the issues really are. And as we talked about it, we came up with taking a knee because there are issues that still need to be addressed. And it was also a way to try to show more respect to the men and women that fight for this country. Okay. So that's better, obviously. That's him. Scroll down for a second. That's 2016. So here's the first one. Look at this one. Okay. Look at the one right below that. Okay. This is the one I'm talking about. Okay. I'm not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color to me. That's the sentence right there. So that's a different... That's a different tenor. The video we just watched was four or five days after these statements were made. So he said he changed after talking to someone. He made changes to what was going on. Oh, okay. Right. So the initial explanation is the one that I was talking about. Okay. So he revised his feelings on it. And then... A super reasonable... I should have started with this. Kaepernick had guns drawn on him by cops for being one of the only black guys in his town. Yeah. That seems super reasonable, what he said there, about having respect for law enforcement. The second take after talking to the military. Yeah. That's better. Or military, rather. Yeah. Although he recently released a video that sort of goes back to the original explanation, suggesting that America is endemically and systemically racist, which is a problem. That's a hot take right now. It's good. It's very popular. Yeah. No, that's the big one. Yeah. That's the big one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.