WNBA star Brittney Griner clapped back on “The View” Thursday, expressing her amazement at the millions of Americans questioning her patriotism because she choose not to stand for the U.S. national anthem.
Griner told the hosts she was “blown away” by the criticism before her 2022 arrest and conviction in Russia.
Breitbart's Warner Todd Huston explains:
“The unpatriotic thing, that blows my mind, because, one, my dad fought for this country, '68, '69, Vietnam Marines and law enforcement for 30 plus years,” she continued. “Dad was my hero. I wanted to be a cop. I didn't want to play basketball growing up, I wanted to be a cop and go into the military, actually. And doesn't it make me more American that I'm demonstrating a protest? That's my right as an American, so for me to be called un-American, I was blown away at that.”
“Despite all that,” Huston writes, “Griner joined those who protested against the United States, the flag, the police, and our history and military” during the protests and riots that overwhelmed authorities in the summer of 2020.
She refused to stand to honor our country during the national anthem and at one point said she would “protest regardless.”
“I'm going to protest regardless. I'm not going to be out there for the national anthem,” she said. “If the league continues to want to play it, that's fine. It will be all season long, I'll not be out there. I feel like more are going to probably do the same thing. I can only speak for myself.”
She also urged the league to stop playing the anthem altogether.
However, following her release after a year in Russian detention, Griner quipped that she'd stand for the anthem because it “hit different” now that she had her freedom back.
“Everyone has made a mistake before,” Griner added in Thursday's televised appearance, referencing her “drug smuggling” conviction after being caught with cannabis oil at a Moscow airport. At the time, Griner traveled to Russia to play basketball for the Russian Premier League during the WNBA's offseason.
Negotiations between Washington and Moscow, finalized on December 8, 2022, resulted in Griner's release. Her freedom from a hard labor camp came in exchange for Viktor Bout's release. A Russian arms dealer known as “the Merchant of Death,” Bout's life inspired the 2005 movie “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage. He was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States for selling tens of millions of dollars in military-grade weaponry to be used against the United States.
The release of Griner was widely celebrated, but the one-for-one swap disappointed officials. They had hoped to free Paul Whelan as well, a corporate security executive and retired Marine, who the U.S. government says is imprisoned in Russia on baseless espionage charges.
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