'The View' Perfectly Sums Up Why Outrage Over NFL Anthem Kneeling Is Misplaced

Whoopi Goldberg kicked off the show by calling POTUS the "bum in chief," after he said anyone protesting at athletic events should be fired from their jobs over the weekend. "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! He's fired! He's fired!'" Trump said in a speech Friday in Alabama.

"You cannot fire someone for exercising their constitutional right, it's illegal," Sunny Hostin explained. "What I want people to understand is, the anthem protest is not about disrespect to the flag, or disrespect to the military or disrespect to the country. Our anthem says 'liberty and justice for all,' what Colin Kaepernick is doing is taking a knee to highlight the gap between the promises of that anthem and the lived experience of African Americans in this community."

While co-host Sara Haines made it clear she won't be taking a knee anytime soon, she explained that she's proud to live in a country where someone else still has that right.

"When I first started Colin Kaepernick's protesting during the national anthem, I remember my first reaction was oh, not the national anthem. I always feel like its one pausing moment for me, my dad fought in Vietnam, my mom and dad met in the Air Force, so my association and my experience was always, one minute -- when people were braver and risked their lives for me -- I pause, I do this," she explained.

"But then, it's one of those challenges and in these divided times we owe it to each other to pause and sometimes you end up back where you started and other times you budge the needle a little," she continued. "And this issue, when I started to walk in someone else's shoes and say, this experience is different and why someone is choosing to protest this, I cannot understand, it's not my experience. As I did that I thought, it almost made me prouder that I will forever stand up and hold my hand on my heart but to know that Colin Kaepernick can kneel next to me for a different reason is what we're all fighting for."

Hostin added that the protest is "very American," saying that it's about a "promise that hasn't been kept."

"If the issue doesn't make any sense to you, then be quiet and let people do what they're doing," Goldberg said, closing the discussion. "Most of these folks fathers, brothers fought in the war, they know what soldiers have done for this nation. That's why they're angry. They're angry because they feel that some soldiers are not treated as well as others, some Americans are not treated as well as others."

"This is about race because America needs to be reminded that we're all in this together," she added, "America is so many different hues, so many different colors, that's the promise of the nation. We're all Americans baby."