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Former NFL star Colin Kaepernick called out the Trump administration during an interview with “The View” on Monday, saying the NFL supported the administration politically.
“Colin, just six months after you started protesting, you say you were forced to opt out of your contract with the 49ers, and you were never picked by another team again,” co-host Ana Navarro said. “You sued the NFL for collusion, claiming that team owners were intentionally keeping you out. They’ve denied this. And it ended in a confidential agreement, though. So now as you look back, what do you think was the reason that not a single team would give you a chance to play for them?”
Kaepernick pointed to politics and power. The former quarterback joined the co-hosts of the liberal talk show to discuss his new book, “The Perilous Fight,” in which he details his football career and the decision to kneel during the national anthem.
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Colin Kaepernick sparked backlash after kneeling in protest during the national anthem at NFL games. (Michael Zagaris/San Francisco 49ers/Getty Images)
“I think it was political,” Kaepernick said. “I also think it was power. I think the reality is, one, I think it’s in important context: I didn’t protest the NFL. So their response to the protest is very informative in relation to where they stand politically. We’ve seen them donate millions of dollars to [President Donald] Trump and this administration.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin agreed as the audience applauded.
“And I think the other part is the realization that the amount of support the protest had, there were also boycotts of the NFL because of their response. The NFL being approximately 70% Black also means that the players as the product on the field have power and control over where the league goes and where they head directionally,” the former 49ers star continued.
Kaepernick said if NFL players unified around that and spent one weekend refusing to play, there would be no games.
“There’s no game, there’s no business and things would change very quickly,” he said.
“You had a lot of people supporting you after that protest, but you also had a lot — getting a lot of hate, you were getting serious death threats from people who felt like you were disrespecting the flag, the country, members of the military,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said. “Were you surprised about the level of backlash that you received?”
“Yes and no,” Kaepernick responded.
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Colin Kaepernick accused the NFL of blackballing him for his protest after no team hired him post-2016. (Getty Images for The Gordon Parks Foundation)
“I think my years growing up were formative to give me some insight into what to expect on the other side of that,” he said. “Also, historically, we’ve seen that, whether it’s Tommie Smith and John Carlos, whether it’s [Muhammad] Ali, we’ve seen it with Curt Flood, we’ve seen it with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. We’ve seen the response to Black people protesting, with Black athletes protesting.”
“The part that candidly surprised me was the amount of pushback on a conversation of, ‘Hey, police shouldn’t kill Black people.’ That doesn’t feel like a controversial topic to me,” Kaepernick said.
“I’m surprised at the level of pushback that people had on that, because we should all want to live in a society where everyone feels safe, everyone feels like they have the opportunity to thrive, and I think that was very revealing in relation to where a lot of people stand and the work that we have to do,” he added.
Digital reached out to the NFL and the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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Colin Kaepernick discussed his new book, “The Perilous Fight,” on “The View” Monday morning. (Phil McCarten/ABC via Getty Images)
2026 marked 10 years since Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality in the United States. He has said that his activism was ultimately what ended his NFL career after no team picked him up once he opted out of his 49ers contract in March 2017.
In an interview earlier this month, Kaepernick said that the NFL was “actively blackballing” him and that he would no longer support the organization.
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“I’m not gonna support an organization that one, is actively blackballing me, but two, has targeted my brothers who have been protesting as part of this as well,” Kaepernick told NBC News. “I watch college football.”
