Texas sportscaster: My buddy didn't die in Vietnam so Trump "could decide who is a patriot"

But more and more we’re hearing unexpected voices, like four-star generals and GOP billionaires, come forward and push back on Trump’s mindless jingoism. 

Monday night on WFFA in Dallas, Texas, longtime sportscaster Dale Hansen dunked on Trump with a pointed, passionate commentary. Hansen reminded Trump about the power of the U.S. Constitution and of free speech, and warned him against using a racist “dog whistle” to try to divide the country, and to try to divide sports fans.

The sportscaster especially demolished Trump’s claim that the NFL protests in particular are in bad taste.

“Donald Trump has said he supports a peaceful protest because it’s an American’s right. But not this protest, and there’s the problem,” said Hansen. “Any protest that you don’t agree with is a protest that should be stopped. Martin Luther King should have marched across a different bridge. Young black Americans should’ve gone to a different college and found a different lunch counter. And college kids in the 60s had no right to protest an immoral war.”

A U.S. veteran, Hansen lectured Trump, who sat out the war with a sore foot:

HANSEN: I served in the military during the Vietnam War, and my foot hurt too. But I served anyway. My best friend in high school was killed in Vietnam, and Carroll Meyer will be 18 years old forever, and he did not die so that you could decide who is a patriot and who loves America more.

The young black athletes are not disrespecting America or the military by taking a knee during the anthem, they are respecting the best thing about America. It’s a dog whistle to the racist among us to say otherwise. They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country, and if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.

That much we can confirm: Trump doesn’t understand America.