2020 long-shot John Hickenlooper refused to condemn the protesters who removed an American flag and replaced it with a Mexican one during a protest outside an Immigration Customs Enforcement facility in Colorado.

Protesters assembled at the Aurora facility Friday to protest the widespread ICE raids that were scheduled to begin Sunday. Raising the Mexican flag after taking down the American flag, they also hoisted a Blue Lives Matter flag they had vandalized. The flag, which is meant to honor law enforcement, was spray-painted with the phrase "Abolish I.C.E."

Hickenlooper, a former governor of Colorado, addressed the events in a Sunday interview on Fox News' America's News Headquarters.

"Is that is something that, as a moderate, needs to be condemned?" Leland Vittert asked, in regards to the protest.

"I certainly respect the American flag. In my whole life I have been fighting to make this country and to make sure that this country welcomes everyone and that the flag represents everyone. I’m old enough I remember when people were burning the flag in protest of the Vietnam War," Hickenlooper answered. "The amazing thing about this country is we are the one place on Earth, or one of the few places on Earth, where that level of freedom of speech is still protected so I may not approve of it, but I think that that freedom is something we as Americans should recognize and say, 'Hey, that’s part of our core freedom.'"

Vittert responded, "I appreciate walking the line and as you point out there is a way to say I defend your right to do it, but I find the behavior abhorrent. Are you willing to say that doing that and ripping down the American flag over a facility in running up the Mexican flag is wrong? Doesn't send the right message? Is not what is going to unite us as you say is so important?"

"I think there are better ways to unite us, there is no question about that," Hickenlooper stated. "You will find all kinds of things that — it’s not a question of whether you are progressive or a moderate I feel like the progressive things that we've accomplished in Colorado are very — I’m an extreme moderate they are very progressive."