Ex-NFL Player Dragged Out by Cops After Calling MAGA a “Nazi Movement”

A former professional football player was carried off in handcuffs Tuesday after protesting the installation of a pro–Donald Trump plaque at his local library.

Former NFL player Chris Kluwe was arrested during a meeting of the Huntington Beach City Council, after he protested against the city’s decision to install a plaque at the public library featuring the acrostic poem, “Magical. Alluring. Galvanizing. Adventurous,” spelling out “MAGA.”

Kluwe, a 15-year resident of Huntington Beach, California, joined several other residents in speaking against the inclusion of Trump’s slogan on the plaque.

“As the community made clear at the library commission meeting last Tuesday, everyone is in favor of a plaque to celebrate the library,” Kluwe said. “But the vast, vast majority are against including a MAGA acrostic, OK?

“Unfortunately it’s clear that this council does not listen, so I’m going to take my time to explain what MAGA has stood for these past three weeks,” he said.

“MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans,” Kluwe said.

“MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children.

“MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably antidemocracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,” Kluwe said, as onlookers burst into shocked laughs and applause.

“I will now engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience,” Kluwe said. As onlookers cheered, Kluwe stepped past the podium, and a police officer could be seen hurrying after him.

The official video of the meeting posted by the City of Huntington Beach cuts away from Kluwe as he was tackled by police officers.

“Do not ask for decorum while you’re shredding the Constitution!” Kluwe can be heard yelling.

In a post on BlueSky Wednesday, Kluwe recapped what he had later told police officers.

The officer “asked for my account of what happened (told him I approached the dais, stopped and put my hands behind my back, then warned the officers I was going to the floor and they would have to carry me out). Asked if I struggled or fought back, I said no (as I’m pretty sure the video evidence would show),” Kluwe wrote.

Another video showed Kluwe was face down on the floor of the chamber while four police officers surrounded and handcuffed him. Kluwe was then carried out by the officers as onlookers cheered.

Police said that Kluwe was charged with disrupting a public assembly, which carries a fine of up to $1,000 or six months in jail, according to California State Penal Code.

During his time in the NFL, Kluwe was an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and there was some speculation that his advocacy led to his release from the Minnesota Vikings in 2013.

The Huntington Beach City Council ultimately voted to approve installing the plaque with the inclusion of the MAGA acrostic poem, according to KTLA.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s billionaire buddy turned commerce secretary, has confirmed that the administration was simply lying to MAGA supporters about not touching Social Security and Medicare.

“Back in October … I flew down to Texas, got Elon Musk to [set up DOGE], and here was our agreement: that Elon was gonna cut a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Lutnick told Jesse Waters of Fox News Wednesday night. “We have almost $4 trillion of entitlements, and no one’s ever looked at it before. You know Social Security is wrong, you know Medicaid and Medicare are wrong. So he’s gonna cut a trillion, and we’re gonna get rid of all these tax scams that hammer against America, and we’re gonna raise a trillion dollars of revenue.”

Just last week, President Trump promised that “Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something. It’s going to be strengthened. Medicare, Medicaid—none of that stuff is going to be touched.”

Fast-forward a week, and he endorsed House Republicans’ budget plan, which is expected to make an $880 billion cut to Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

This is a long cry from the party that was telling its voters—many of whom are elderly conservatives on government benefits—that it wouldn’t lay a finger on the programs they need most.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s purge of federal government employees has apparently gone too far for one Fox News personality.

Jesse Watters begged Trump on The Five Wednesday to be “less callous” in his mass firings because his friend Chris, a military veteran for 20 years who “has killed a lot of bad guys” and “put his life on the line,” was among those set to be axed in cuts to the Department of Defense.

“He punched out after 20 years, and [is now] working for the Pentagon. And he’s only been there a few months, so he’s probationary, and he just found out he’s probably going to get laid off. He’s going to get DOGE’d,” Watters said, adding that he got a text message from the friend, who was upset.

“This guy is not a DEI consultant. This guy is not a climate consultant. This guy is a veteran. So when you’re talking about DOGE-ing people, veterans should get priority. Because if you’re going to go out there and kill enemies, and put your life on the line for this country, you should not be in the same category as people that are doing DEI,” Watters added.

Watters is only upset because someone he knows personally was affected by Trump and Musk’s mass firings. Otherwise, he’d continue to cheer on the arbitrary cuts across the federal workforce. What he and the rest of right-wing media don’t realize is that plenty of other federal workers like Chris have lost their jobs or will soon. Some are veterans, as are 30 percent of federal workers, and others were simply hired too recently.

The firings are taking place regardless of stellar personnel records, and have claimed workers vital to national security that the Trump administration has tried to walk back, such as people who work with the U.S. nuclear arsenal or whose expertise with bird flu is badly needed right now. Watters and his friends on the right ought to realize that Trump and Musk are simply gutting the federal government without any regard for the consequences.

If America was concerned about Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s relationship after their dual Oval Office press conference last week, the MAGA duo’s interview with Sean Hannity did nothing to assuage it.

Appearing side by side in the White House, the president of the United States was cut off and forced to defer to Musk’s language on the multi-billionaire’s missive to other ultra-wealthy people.

“I’d like to also just send a message—like, because, as the president said, like, this—there’s a lot of rich people out there,” Musk said. “They should be caring more about the country because—the reason they should be caring about—more about country is: America falls, what do you think is going to happen to your business?”  

“What do—what do you think—do you think you’re be going to be okay if—if the ship of America sinks? Of course not. Like, what—what I’m doing here, what the president is doing is it’s just long-term thinking. The ship of America must be strong.  The ship of America cannot sink.  If it sinks, we all sink with it.”

When Trump attempted to join in on the answer, Hannity seemed more eager to follow up on Musk’s response, explicitly cutting the president off.

“Sean, you’re a—” Trump started, pointing at the Fox News host.

“This is important,” Hannity responded to Trump, raising his hand to stop him.

Last week, Musk spent more time talking to reporters than Trump did during their joint press conference. The image to the rest of the world was clear: While Trump hunched over the Resolute Desk, the world’s richest man took the reins. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell measured the time spent talking by each administrative figurehead and found that Musk had spoken 3,666 words at the executive order signing, whereas Trump spoke 2,487 words.

Compare Musk’s constant presence to the role that Trump’s vice presidents play in his political realm: Former Vice President Mike Pence never spoke more than Trump did at a Trump-centric event during his first term, and Vice President JD Vance likely never will, either (in part because Vance has been conspicuously absent from many major events so far). That discrepancy calls into question what power Musk, who donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s presidential campaign, really has in the administration.

Elsewhere in the duo’s Hannity interview, Musk described criticism of his efforts to strip federal agencies as a nonelected, special government employee, as the “thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.”

“We must be over the target or doing something right,” Musk told Hannity. 

“They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful,” he continued. “What we’re really trying to do here is restore the will of the people through the president. And what we’re finding is that there’s an unelected bureaucracy—speaking of unelected, there’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the president and the cabinet.”

Donald Trump called Elon Musk the head of the Department of Government Efficiency Wednesday, and while this may seem obvious to everyone, the White House has been pretending like it isn’t—and the truth could land them in legal trouble. 

During an appearance at the Future Investment Institute Summit in Miami, Trump told attendees at the Saudi investment fund event exactly what Musk’s real job is.

“I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, and put a man named Elon Musk in charge,” Trump said. 

For an administration that loves to tout its own radical transparency, they sure seem to want to mislead Americans on who is really calling the shots at DOGE.

The Trump administration filed a court declaration Monday asserting that Musk’s official title is “senior adviser to the president,” a position that holds “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.” It also claims that Musk isn’t a DOGE employee or its administrator, but an employee of the White House. 

The filing flies in the face of Trump’s original announcement naming Musk the head of DOGE, as well as everything we’ve seen from Musk since, as the unelected bureaucrat has taken aim at essential federal employees, sending agencies scrambling to hire them back. Most recently, he and his friends at DOGE pretended to save money by eliminating fictionalized government contracts. 

Monday’s filing came as Musk faces legal scrutiny in federal court this week. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ultimately declined to issue a temporary restraining order against Musk and DOGE Tuesday, saying that it wasn’t yet clear that their actions would cause irreparable harm. 

By obfuscating leadership, it seems that the Trump administration wants to avoid accountability for its actions. U.S. District Judge John Bates ruled last week that DOGE should be considered an “agency,” although Trump was “curiously” avoiding calling it that explicitly.  

“This appears to come from a desire to escape the obligations that accompany agencyhood—such as being subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act—while reaping only its benefits,” Bates wrote in his order.