UCLA Graduate, Vikings Punter Was Arrested After Pro-Trans/Anti-Trump Speech
Chris Kluwe, a former professional NFL punter with the Vikings and graduate of UCLA, was arrested after he protested the installation of a MAGA plaque at a Huntington Beach City Council meeting on Tuesday night. In his speech, he decried the current administration’s actions against trans-Americans, the firing of government employees who oversee our nuclear arsenal, airplane safety, and those who serve our veterans and the veterans themselves.
Here is his speech in front of the city council meeting:
He said, “MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakeably anti-democracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. They may have substituted a red hat for an armband with a swastika, but every single thing MAGA stands for is what the Nazis did. Eugenics. Racism. Blind loyalty to the leader over what benefits the community as a whole.”
You can read the text of his speech here, with citations for all of his points. Kluwe is now a writer.
After he finished, he announced that he would “Now engage in the time-honored tradition of peaceful disobedience.” When he walked to the dias in front of the city council seats with the intention of lying on the dias until he was removed. Kluwe was then arrested and taken away by five officers from the Huntington Beach Police Department.
He was held for four hours while the police “figured out what to charge him with” and was cited for “disrupting an assembly.”
When Kluwe was released, he said in a post on Bluesky, “Just got out of jail. Only forty-four left to go to catch John Lewis’s record. Remember – peaceful civil disobedience. Don’t comply in advance.” He added, around 11:00 p.m., “I appreciate everyone’s messages of support. I’m trying to get through all my mentions, but as you can imagine, it’s been a bit of a busy day :) Remember – peaceful civil disobedience, and no kings, no tyrants. Not ever.” in reference to the official White House account and Trump’s deputy chief of staff sending out AI-generated images of Trump as a king.
