Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg stuck up for NFL player protests during the national anthem, telling TMZ this week that his service in the military was partially about protected the right to protest peacefully. Buttigieg, a Navy veteran, shared his viewpoint on Thursday after a TMZ cameraman in New York asked him his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s denunciations of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started a wave of protests when he knelt during the anthem at a preseason game in 2016 to focus attention on racial inequality and police brutality. “The flag that was on my shoulder when I served represented, among other things, the right to free speech,” Buttigieg told the TMZ cameraman. “You don’t have to like it but one of the reasons we served was to defend that right, the right to peaceful protest and the idea that we can protest what is wrong with our country,” he said.

He echoed his stance during an interview with The Washington Post’s Robert Costa. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, told Costa that in his view, the protesting players were “exercising a right that I had put my life on the line to defend.” “I didn’t think of the flag as something that itself as an image was sacred. I thought of it as something that was sacred because of what it represented,” he said. “One of the very things it represented is the freedom of speech, and that’s one of the reasons I served.”

I was trained to stand & salute. But freedom--including to protest injustice--is the whole point of the anthem, the flag, and the country. — Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) September 24, 2017