Former quarterback Colin Kaepernick was given the 2017 Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award on Thursday for all he has done, and is doing, for social justice. Fox & Friends were not happy with him receiving the honor.
“They just turned Muhammad Ali’s Legacy Award into toilet paper,” Kevin Jackson said on Fox & Friends.
“Look, Kaepernick is no Ali,” he went on. “And the idea that the left continue to want to sell this lie to America, that this man stands for something that supposedly is happening in this country that’s not, just shows you that the left will never give up on this narrative.”
Co-host Brian Kilmeade replied, “Well, let’s talk about the differences. Muhammad Ali gets told you better get drafted — you are drafted, go. And he says I’m not. It’s against my religious beliefs, I won’t do it, so he is out. They strip him of his heavyweight title, which is bizarre in retrospect. And for three and a half years, he has absolutely no money,” he said.
“Colin Kaepernick has already made a zillion dollars where there wasn’t that much money in sports back then anyway,” he added. “And then he walked away from that contract in 2016. He would have been still on that roster. They would have had to cut him or he would have had payout.”
To imply that Kaepernick simply “walked away” from the San Francisco 49ers isn’t true. The general manager himself has said that Kaepernick would have been let go if he hadn’t opted out.
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The facts didn’t play into anything said on Fox & Friends as Jackson continued, saying, “You are exactly right. So Colin Kaepernick chose his own fate and there are many other bad comparisons.”
Jackson went even farther with his rhetoric claiming, “Colin Kaepernick gives money to terrorists. So, look at the people he has donated money to, these are radicals in many cases. Very anti-American, ethno-centrically racist black organizations.”
When Kaepernick left the NFL he had stated he would donate $1 million over the course of a year as well as revenue from his jersey sales from 2016 to a multitude of organizations that help to support oppressed communities.
Since then, he has donated money to a charter school in Harlem, the Coalition for the Homeless, an organization that helps families who are victims of violent crimes, summer camp for Baltimore high-school students, Meals on Wheels, Somalia famine relief, assistance for black veterans, the Center for Reproductive Rights, as well as many other social justice and civil rights organizations.
It is unclear which of those Jackson thinks are terrorist-affiliated.
Perhaps he is referencing Kaepernick’s close ties with the non-violent group Black Lives Matter which is by no stretch a terrorist organization.
“Muhammad Ali got a raw deal. Colin Kaepernick did not get a raw deal,” Jackson concluded.
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