Colin Kaepernick sat out of the 2016 presidential election. The San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who sparked NFL and nationwide protests against racism by taking a knee during the National Anthem, told reporters after Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals on November 13 that he didn’t vote during Tuesday's election.
According to the biracial football star, voting for either candidate Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton would have been “hypocritical.”
“I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression. I'm not going to show support for that system,” he explained on Sunday. “And to me, the oppressor isn't going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression."
The athlete started a movement during preseason by refusing to stand during the Star-Spangled Banner in protest of a “country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
When asked about Trump’s win, Kaepernick told reporters after the game on Sunday that “everybody should feel urgency to make sure we're doing the right thing, building things the right way, in order to be able to protect ourselves from the things that may come from this.”
POTUS-elect Trump previously spoke out about Kaepernick’s kneeling, stating that the controversial athlete should leave the country if he doesn’t like it.
“I think it’s a lack of respect for our country,” Trump said on Fox & Friends in September of the protest. “It’s a lack of appreciation for our country and it’s a very sad thing. I have never seen anything quite like it. You’re talking about a major sport, maybe the major sport. When you see that, it leads to a lot of other things. I think it’s lack of respect and appreciation of our country. … They should try another country, see if they like it better, see how well they’ll be doing, see if they’ll make $20 million a year being a second-string quarterback.”
