Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe says he’s been fired from a high school coaching job following his arrest at a Huntington Beach city council meeting in which he blasted the MAGA movement.
“MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy, and, most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement,” he said on Feb. 18 during a debate about whether to install a plaque with a MAGA acronym at the local public library. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,” Kluwe added to cheers.
He then said he would engage in the “time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” and walked up to the platform in front of where the city council was seated. With the cheers still ringing out, he was quickly arrested.
In the days following his arrest, Kluwe continued to speak out against President Donald Trump, calling for “peaceful civil disobedience” and “no kings.” He’s since been fired from his job coaching football at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, he told The Guardian on Thursday.
“I knew it was a possible consequence,” the 43-year-old Kluwe, who spent eight seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, said in an email.
“I think it just goes to show what MAGA actually stands for,” he added. “They don’t want to build anything, they just want to tear people and institutions down to make themselves feel better, regardless of what it costs the community. I sincerely doubt Edison is going to find another ex-NFL player to coach freshman football.”
Kluwe was not giving a reason for his firing, but the school did tell him he’d brought it a lot of attention, he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Edison and the Huntington Beach High School District for comment.
Kluwe’s original protest quickly went viral.
“MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing,” Kluwe said before his arrest.
Without naming Trump megadonor Elon Musk or his shadowy cost-cutting task force DOGE, he ticked off a number of actions the “department” of government efficiency—which is not an official agency operating with congressional oversight—had unilaterally taken.
“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,” he said.
Last week, Kluwe told The Guardian he had been assigned a court date in April over the arrest. At his booking, police held him for 2.5 hours while they looked for something to charge him with—and now, he said, the ACLU might get involved.
Kluwe was previously one of the best punters in the NFL, where he played from 2005 to 2013. He says his career was cut short after he campaigned in support of same-sex marriage.
