Brittney Griner Tells ‘The View’ She Was “Blown Away” When Critics Called Her “UnAmerican” For Protesting The National Anthem: “I Wanted To Be A Cop Growing Up” 

Brittney Griner made her Hot Topics table debut on this morning’s episode of The View, where she clapped back at critics calling her “unAmerican” for previously kneeling during the national anthem.

The WNBA player spent nearly 10 months in a Russian prison after airport authorities discovered vape canisters with THC in her luggage. She was released in December 2022 after the United States agreed to swap her for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

While many — including the co-hosts on The View —championed Griner’s return to the States, some critics were not as supportive.

“Some people called you careless and others called you unpatriotic — I don’t know where that came from — and said you didn’t deserve this country’s help because you had knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality,” Joy Behar told Griner, who let out a small chuckle upon hearing the comments.

Griner replied, “To that, I will say this. People that called me careless, have you ever [forgotten] your keys? Or where’s my glasses? On top of my head. Everyone’s made a mistake before.”

The athlete seemed more shocked to be labeled as “unpatriotic” for kneeling during the national anthem.

“That blows my mind because my dad fought for this country … Vietnam Marines, law enforcement for 30-plus years,” she said. “That 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 belong to the military, actually.”

Griner continued, “Doesn’t it make me more American that I’m demonstrating a protest? That’s my right as an American. For me to be called unAmerican, I was blown away at that.”

Despite staying in the locker room for the national anthem in 2020, Griner decided to stand up for the song in her first season back to the WNBA post-incarceration.

“Having been put in a literal cage, too small for her frame, stripped of her essential American freedoms, and deprived of even her most basic rights during a sham trial and unjust sentencing, Brittney, supported by many other players, will make a statement this WNBA season by standing tall for those uniquely American freedoms — the most important of which being the absolute and inviolable and constitutionally protected freedom to stand, sit, kneel, praise, protest, and otherwise make your voice heard,” Griner’s agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas wrote in a 2023 op-ed for Time magazine.

The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.