Videos that went viral this week showing dogs attacking a man wearing a Colin Kaepernick video were intended to be part of a fundraiser for the National Navy SEAL Museum, but the videos were denounced by the Navy and resulted in the Navy SEALs cutting ties with the independent museum.
Rear Admiral Collin Green, the commander of the Navy SEALs, said the videos were unacceptable because they implied that Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem made him an enemy of America.
“Each and every one of us serves to protect our fellow Americans - ALL Americans. Even the perception that our commitment to serving the men and women of this nation is applied unevenly is destructive,” Green wrote in an email to his forces, according to the Associated Press.
Green said the Department of Defense previously had a relationship with the Navy SEAL Museum but would cut ties until it was satisfied that incidents like that would not happen again.
“While the museum is an independent non-profit organization and the participants were contracted employees from outside the DoD, in many ways, these facts are irrelevant. We have been inextricably linked to this organization that represents our history,” Green said. “We may not have contributed to the misperception in this case, but we suffer from it and will not allow it to continue.”
The videos, which have had millions of views this week, showed men with guns, wearing tactical gear, ordering dogs to attack a man wearing a Kaepernick jersey.