The United States Navy SEALs will no longer be supporting the SEALs Museum. Two viral videos of service members at the museum pretending to be Colin Kaepernick while being attacked by trained K-9s, resurfaced online.
Letter to the Navy SEALs
“Each and every one of us serves to protect our fellow Americans – ALL Americans,” Rear Admiral Collin Green, head of the Naval Special Warfare Command, said in an email to his forces, AP reported. “Even the perception that our commitment to serving the men and women of this nation is applied unevenly is destructive.”
“We will revisit our relationship with the Museum when I am convinced that they have made the necessary changes to ensure this type of behavior does not happen again,” he added. “While the museum is an independent non-profit organization and the participants were contracted employees from outside the DoD, in many ways, these facts are irrelevant. We have been inextricably linked to this organization that represents our history.”
“We may not have contributed to the misperception in this case, but we suffer from it and will not allow it to continue,” he concluded.
The Videos
The Navy Seal Museum used a “Colin Kaepernick stand-in” where a service member wore his 49er’s jersey while being attacked by four K-9 dogs. The incident took place during a 2019 fundraiser for the museum and was subsequently posted to Instagram. The video resurfaced and has since gone viral.
Kaepernick is a former NFL quarterback who started the kneeling during the National Anthem movement. The kneeling was a sign to show the social justice issues with racism and police brutality.
The second video shows the stand-in is told to lay on his stomach before he said “Oh man, I will stand,” referencing his kneeling movement.
The U.S. Navy Twitter account where they condemned the video and said that is not what the branch of military stands for. “We are investigating the matter fully and initial indications are that there were no active-duty Navy personnel or equipment involved with this independent organization’s event,” they wrote.
Watch the videos, below.
