On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about Colin Kaepernick’s publicity stunt over the weekend, and how it relates to the broader culture war and impeachment inquiry. Video and partial transcript below:
Colin Kaepernick was given a workout by the NFL. [They] offered to organize a private workout for him and invited every single team in the league to attend, according to ESPN.
According to Amanda Prestigiacomo, reporting for The Daily Wire:
The session, according to ESPN, allowed Kaepernick an on-field workout and an interview, which would both be taped and made available to all teams. Moreover, the workout was set up to provide teams anonymity, so if they watched Kaepernick and didn’t want him, they wouldn’t catch flak. This was done to encourage more teams to attend the event, thus helping the quarterback secure a position.
But this was not good enough for Kaepernick, [who] canceled the workout abruptly over the weekend on Saturday — about a half-hour before the session was supposed to begin — apparently because he wasn’t allowed to bring his own camera crew, because he wanted to grandstand and the NFL said [paraphrasing], “No, if you really want to work in the NFL, then we are going to tape it and all of the teams will show up. But you’re not allowed to grandstand and call out the Miami Dolphins for not signing you or something.”
“The workout was originally set for 3 P.M. and was to be held at the Atlanta Falcons’ practice facility in Flowery Branch,” CBS News reported. “At 2:30, representatives for the free agent quarterback informed the league that Kaepernick would instead be conducting the workout at 4 P.M. at Drew High School in Riverdale, Georgia.”
So Kaepernick attended his own workout in a “Kunta Kinte” t-shirt, comparing himself to the defiant slave from the movie “Roots.” Because when I think of Colin Kaepernick, I think of a person who was forced into involuntary servitude and then whipped. I mean, Colin Kaepernick, Kunta Kinte — exactly the same, if you are an insane person. Of course, there’s an iconic scene in the film “Roots,” where Kunta Kinte is whipped by his master for refusing to acknowledge his slave name, Toby.
A statement from Kaepernick’s agent and lawyer released before the workout blamed a liability waiver and the NFL denying the quarterback the opportunity to bring his own camera crew to the workout for their decision to ditch the event with such little notice.
Also, they used as an excuse the fact that the NFL forced him to sign a liability waiver, which is a normal liability waiver, because if he gets hurt in the course of this, they don’t want the NFL to be sued.
According to the NFL, the waiver Kaepernick threw a fit over was a “standard liability waiver based on the waiver used by National Invitational Camp at all NFL Combines and by NFL clubs when trying out free agent players.”
Also, Kaepernick didn’t inform them of his request to have his own personal camera crew attend the event until Friday night, and [the NFL] said:
We heard for the first time last night, around the same time we heard from Nike, that Colin wanted to bring his own video crew. We heard for the first time this afternoon that Colin wanted to open the event to all media.
So this has been his routine. He came out after his training session, apparently scouts said that he was mediocre, that he still has arm strength — which was never his problem. His problem is that he couldn’t make a secondary read. His problem is that he would run before he actually did his read progression, and that he was not accurate in throws downfield. Those were his big problems. He [always] had a lot of arm strength, he still has his arm strength. He’s 32 years old and he’s a strong guy. I mean, why not? But here is Colin Kaepernick afterward proclaiming himself a hero of the republic.
KAEPERNICK: Been ready for three years, I’ve been denied for three years. We all know why I came out here and showed it today in front of everybody. We have nothing to hide. So we’re waiting for the 32 owners, and 32 teams, Roger Goodell, all of them to stop running. Stop running from the truth, stop running from the people. We’re out here, we’re ready to play, ready to go anywhere. My agent Jeff Nalley, he’s ready to talk to any team, interview a team at any time. I’ve been ready? I’m staying ready, and I’ll continue to be ready.
So in other words, the way that you are auditioning for teams to hire you is by being a head case and a pain in the ass. That really is what this is, because this is not anymore about police brutality, or free speech, or anything like that. This is about, why would, if you’re a team owner, why would you possibly hire a guy as probably third-string quarterback who, if he does not play, is immediately going to go to the media and suggest that you are a brutal, vicious racist?
Stephen A. Smith over at ESPN, who is no right-winger … he slams Colin Kaepernick over this, and then he got a bunch of flak from the Left because this is how our dumb society works. Here is Stephen Smith going after Kaepernick and saying this is all grandstanding nonsense.
SMITH: Colin Kaepernick wants to change the venue, Colin Kaepernick wants his own receivers, Colin Kaepernick wants to video things himself. Colin Kaepernick wants the media — this is Colin Kaepernick, the media can’t find him. He ain’t done no interviews, he ain’t talk to nobody, media can’t find him. But he wants to do — he wants the media available now. He don’t want to play, he wants to be a martyr. But guess what? It ain’t working this time.
So Stephen A. Smith then gets an enormous amount of flak from the Left because he said a true thing. But by the way, this is the consensus. Even with a lot of folks on the Left who are concerned about racial issues from a left-leaning perspective, there’s a report yesterday that [a source] told Sports Illustrated that [Jay-Z] is “disappointed with Colin’s actions and believes he’s turned a legitimate workout into a publicity stunt.”
Jay-Z has been a longtime Kaepernick supporter. Apparently, he was rumored to have had a hand in organizing the Saturday workout with the NFL athletes to help the athlete secure a position with the team. Again, according to Amanda Prestigiacomo over at The Daily Wire:
As noted by The Undefeated, Jay-Z’s Carter’s Roc Nation entertainment company signed on with the NFL this summer to lead the organization’s “music and entertainment endeavors …”
Asked by a reporter if he’d “kneel or stand,” Jay-Z responded: “I think we’re past kneeling. I think it’s time to go into actionable items. I think everyone knows what the issue is, and we’re done with that … . Okay, next. Where we moving on next?”
So here’s the Right’s response to all of this: We knew all this from the beginning. And where were all of you? Like, really, we all knew this was grandstanding nonsense from the very beginning, that this was Colin Kaepernick’s way of getting a headline and making money. So where were all of you? Or, was this just another way to divide the country for purposes of dividing the country?
For the Left, it was a way of dividing the country over dumb issue where again, there is broad agreement. You’re allowed to kneel for the anthem, you’re allowed to burn the flag, it also makes you a jerk to do so. Also, we all agree that if the police act in a racist way, that is a bad thing. If the police do something wrong, they should be prosecuted, but the police are overwhelmingly doing their best to make cities safer. There’s a vast amount of agreement on these issues and what the Left does too often, and this is true in the case of the cultural Left of Kaerpenick, what the Left does too often is they pick a bad example, and then if you oppose their bad example, they say that you oppose the underlying idea.
They pick a jerk like Kaepernick, and then if you say, “I don’t like what Kaepernick is doing, I think he’s doing something bad, doing something wrong, and doing something that is bad for the country.” Then they say, “Well, it’s because you don’t care about police racism.” This is the routine that the Left would like to play.
The Right’s response to this typically is “Well , F-you.” Okay, that is the Right’s response to all of this. We’re seeing more of these incredibly stupid cultural controversies brought up by the Left, and this is why, again, this all plays into the Trump impeachment inquiry, because how you see Trump is basically deciding how you see this impeachment inquiry.
Nobody sees this as a nonpartisan effort to get to the bottom of the matter. Nobody sees this as a real defense of the Constitution. Everybody sees this for what it is, which is a deeply political exercise. And where you come down on that political exercise is largely dependent on where you come down in these culture wars.
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