Senator Ted Cruz slammed NFL players who protest during the national anthem on Monday, saying that they caused “unprecedented damage” to the league.

After landing in Washington D.C., the cameras for TMZ Sports caught up with the Texas Republican and asked him what he thinks of the anthem protests.

“I think it has been amazing watching the NFL do unprecedented damage to their brand and the way they handled the anthem protest I think was spectacularly harmful to professional football,” Cruz said of players such as Colin Kaepernick who began taking a knee during the national anthem starting in the 2016 season.

The TMZ reporter then reminded Cruz that the league is governed by anti-trust laws and wondered if the Senator thought that Congress could take steps to put an end to player protests.

Cruz, though, was completely uninterested in having Congress get involved in the issue.

“Look, as a general matter I am skeptical of anti-trust exemptions,” the recently re-elected Sen. replied. “I think the laws ought to apply to everyone.”

However, Cruz said that he doesn’t think that Congress needs to get involved. “You know, at the end of the day, I trust the fans to exercise the appropriate check,” Cruz concluded.

The NFL player protests cropped up during his recent campaign for re-election in Texas, too, after his Democrat opponent became the star of the left-wing when a video showing him defending the player protests became a viral hit among leftists everywhere.

In response to the widely viewed video, Cruz slammed his Democrat opponent for supporting the anti-American protests. “When Beto O’Rourke says he can’t think of anything more American (than players taking a knee), well I got to tell you, I can,” Cruz said at the end of August.

Ted Cruz won his re-election campaign taking 50.9 percent of the vote to O’Rourke’s 48.3 percent.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.