Ex-NFL punter Chris Kluwe says he was fired as a high school coach over MAGA plaque protest
Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe said that he was fired from his job as a high school football coach following his protest at a local council meeting in California.
Last week, Kluwe spoke out against a nod to the MAGA slogan popularized by President Donald Trump being featured on a commemorative plaque outside Huntington Beach Central Library.
After the speech, which was widely shared on social media, Kluwe engaged in what he called the “time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” – approaching the council members sitting in front of him before being restrained by police.
“Just got fired from being a freshman football coach, if you want to know what MAGA does to communities,” Kluwe, who spent most of his NFL career with the Minnesota Vikings, said on social media platform Bluesky on Thursday.
“They don’t care about what helps people, because the school is certainly not going to find an ex-NFL player willing to coach there at that level, they only care about trying to hurt people.”
Kluwe told CNN that the school had fired him because it was “getting too much attention,” adding: “I’m sad that I won’t be able to work with the kids anymore, because they always were excited once they figured out I had played in the NFL.”
The 43-year-old previously told CNN that he was charged by police with a misdemeanor for disrupting an assembly and was held in police custody for about four hours. He added that he has a court date in April for the charge.
CNN has contacted the Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD) for comment.
The plaque commemorating 50 years of Huntington Beach’s library has attracted widespread controversy for including the words “Magical Alluring Galvanizing Adventurous” – an acrostic spelling out Trump’s MAGA slogan.
Underneath the words on the plaque, it reads: “Through hope and change, our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again,” making reference to former presidents Barack Obama (“hope and change”) and Joe Biden (“build back better”).
Kluwe was one of several residents to criticize the plaque at a city council meeting on February 18, but the motion to approve the design was passed unanimously by the council members.
Speaking before the motion was passed, council member Chad Williams said that criticism of the privately-financed plaque was a sign that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is “very real.”
CNN has contacted the Huntington Beach City Council for further comment on the plaque.
Kluwe, who retired from the NFL in 2013, spoke at the council meeting about what MAGA represents to him, from censorship, book bans, cutting education funds, and firing federal employees, to equating the slogan to racism and anti-democracy.
Kluwe told CNN last week that public libraries should be “apolitical” and that the city council “does not care about the community of Huntington Beach.”
He added: “They’ve made it very obvious that their goal is to advance their own interests to rise higher in Trump’s sphere of influence … That’s really a problem, when a city’s council doesn’t have its city’s best interests in mind.”
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He also said that the response to his protest at the council meeting was “overwhelmingly positive,” with lots of people thanking him for taking a stand.
