Colin Kaepernick. He’s been in the news so much over the past couple of years, that every household in America knows who he is: The NFL player who dared to take a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

He did so in protest of a national system that he believes is unjust. A system that allows unarmed black men and women to be killed with no reconciliation.

Now, a year later, NFL players from teams all over the country are protesting in the same subtle, non-violent way. And the country is going insane over it.

President Trump made a speech at a campaign rally in Huntsville, Alabama last Friday, in which he called Kaepernick a “son of a bitch” and called for all of the protesting players to be fired. This is a problem.

One: Our president is calling a man who is exercising his right to peacefully protest a “son of a bitch” while having previously said that many white supremacist protesters are “very fine people.”

Something seems wrong with this picture. To think that our president has kinder words for blatant racists than he does for people calmly protesting social inequality is beyond me.

Two: While he’s ranting and raving about what our professional athletes are doing, Puerto Rico is still without power, and millions of its citizens are still waiting on our help.

Let me rephrase that. Millions of [our] citizens are still waiting. Has our president forgotten that Puerto Ricans are also U.S. citizens? What has happened to them is not a foreign issue, it’s a domestic one. But, it seems that what football players do is more important than the lives of our own people.

Three: Trump called for the athletes to be fired. Nowhere in the NFL rulebook (found on the NFL website) does it say that athletes should act a certain way during the National Anthem. But, here’s the thing: It is completely legal for private businesses to fire employees for something they say or do, and sports leagues are private businesses. It’s the owner’s decision.

This also means that if the owners don’t want to fire the athletes, they don’t have to. Here’s where it gets tricky. A group of New Orleans Saints players joined the protest, and now Louisiana State Rep. Kenny Havard wants to cut their funding. The Saints are backed by $165 million of state funding.

Our lawmakers can’t fire athletes, but they can take tax dollars away if this peaceful protest continues. The Saints aren’t completely reliant on our tax dollars, but $165 million is a lot of money.

My point is the president and members of Congress were given their positions by ordinary people like you and me. The government’s job is to make laws, provide common defense, manage foreign relations, protect citizens’ constitutional rights and establish federal courts.

The government’s job is definitely not to force citizens to stand at attention and salute the flag during the National Anthem. In fact, I’d say there’s nothing more un-American than forcing someone to do something they disagree with.