Bill Maher rips Colin Kaepernick over Hillary Clinton criticisms

Bill Maher calls Colin Kaepernick an “idiot,” following his negative comments about Hillary Clinton.

Colin Kaepernick made headlines last month when he decided to protest police brutality and racial injustice against African-Americans by sitting and later kneeling during the national anthem before the start of 49ers games. He’s since continued to use his platform to discuss such topics as the upcoming presidential election, recently describing the first debate as “embarrassing to watch,” and calling the candidates “proven liars” who were “trying to debate who’s less racist,” adding: “And at this point … you have to pick the lesser of two evils. But in the end, it’s still evil.”

Those comments didn’t sit well with Bill Maher, who has defended Clinton numerous times on his HBO show Real Time, urging former Bernie Sanders supporters and other disaffected liberals to vote for her over Trump or the third-party options. The comedian took to Twitter to voice his displeasure with Kaepernick, calling on the backup quarterback to “look up ‘false equivalency.'”

#colinkapernick is an idiot.I support his protest,but stick to what u know: kneeling and interceptions, and then look up "false equivalency"
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) September 28, 2016

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The tweet received an angry response from Kaepernick’s girlfriend, MTV and radio personality Nessa, who called Maher a “bum” for misspelling the NFL player’s last name, before writing, “You’re not ‘supporting’ his protest by disrespecting him.”

Maher’s comments come after he defended Kaepernick’s protest in a recent episode of Real Time, stating, “What people died and fought for was for his right to do that.” He later added:

"It seems like the right-wing defines what patriotism is, and then if you do something different you’re not patriotic. You know what I don’t like about sport events? I don’t like the big celebration of militarism — the flyovers of the jets and all that sh*t. I’m just trying to watch a game, I don’t want to be reminded of all that … So why don’t we leave it out of sports altogether?”"

Maher went on to rip the local police union for threatening to no longer work 49ers games, calling them “a bunch of oversensitive babies,” and criticized the country’s largest police union for endorsing Trump. During the conversation about the topic, actress Kerry Washington, who has campaigned for Clinton, alluded to Kaepernick’s previous criticisms of the former secretary of state, including the suggestion that she should be in jail for deleting emails, but supported his right to express himself despite being in the public eye, and suggested that he could one day be viewed as a civil rights hero like Muhammad Ali.

Next: Bill Maher makes assassination joke about Donald Trump

In response to Kaepernick’s national anthem protest, Trump suggested the QB leave the country, while Clinton has yet to publicly comment on the subject, but her running mate Tim Kaine, whose eldest son is a Marine, said that he while respected his position, he offered that he’d “do it differently.” Meanwhile, President Obama recently reiterated his support of Kaepernick’s gesture during a CNN Town Hall with members of the Army, but urged him and other protestors to consider the pain it may cause some of the family members of those who have been killed in combat.

Real Time with Bill Maher airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on HBO. Tonight’s episode will feature Sarah Silverman, Sean Penn, conservative economist Stephen Moore, Peter Hamby, the Head of News at Snapchat, and liberal commentator Angela Rye.

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