MLB Network announcer and NBC Sports personality Bob Costas is no stranger to imposing his liberal politics on viewers, so he appeared on CNN Monday morning in light of the NFL protests to bemoan the National Anthem and patriotism being exclusively linked to the military and Trump supporters having brain damage.

“You're not going to find many voices of support outside his base, his extreme base, for these remarks,” Costas surmised, showing a shameful disconnect from the millions who have voted for the President and/or oppose the protests.

Costas agreed that the criticism of players who protested the President aka the National Anthem did have a racial element, noting that “70% of the players in the NFL roughly are African-American” with the “the initial impetus from it or for it came from Colin Kaepernick and it was about police brutality and mistreatment of African-Americans.”

He then continued concerning the National Anthem:

Now, if you want to make the point that the National Anthem is about something more than the nation's flaws and shortcomings, it's also about its ideals and that people can see some texture to what the National Anthem means, and you might prefer that people protest or make their point outside of the National Anthem, that's something that can be argued. But the idea this doesn't have something to do with race is preposterous.

On that theme, Costas played the role of a far-left college professor, stating that “[p]art of what's happened is that sports and patriotism and the flag have been conflated to such an extent that people can't separate out any nuance.”

“If you go to see Hamilton, which is about the founding of the republic, no one said, wait a minute. Don't raise the curtain until we hear the National Anthem. When you went to see Saving Private Ryan no one said turn off the projector Saving Private Ryan — no one said turn off the projector until we've had the National Anthem. It's in sports where this stuff happens,” he added, which was a giant Red herring.

Costas also foolishly claimed that everyone “respect[s]” the “sacrifice” military servicemen and women make seeing as how, if you’ve ever read NewsBusters in our 12-year history, celebrities and some in the media have opined otherwise.

Within that point, he went on a tangent complaining that the American flag, the National Anthem, and patriotism have become a symbol of the military. Costas argued that the patriotism of soldiers should be extended to other professions:

Sometimes movingly, sometimes I submit cynically, because wrapping yourself in the flag and honoring the military is something which no one is going to object to....We all honor their sacrifice, and yet, what it has come to mean is that the flag is primarily and only about the military. This is no disrespect to the military. It's a huge part of the narrative, but Martin Luther King was a patriot. Susan B. Anthony was a patriot. Dissidents are patriots. Schoolteachers and social workers are patriots and yet at Yankee Stadium, we can shift sports, not only do they play the National Anthem before the game but God Bless America at the seventh inning stretch 81 times a year at home homes and in every case, they say, please rise as the Yankees honor a military guest. I have no problem with that. I stand every time I'm in the ballpark no matter what it is, I stand and I certainly respect the military person they bring out there. But there’s never a schoolteacher, there’s never social worker. Patriotism comes in many forms[.]

“[A]nd what has happened is that it's been conflated with — with kind of a bumper sticker kind of flag waving, and with the military only. So that people cannot see that in his own way, Colin Kaepernick, however imperfectly, is doing a patriotic thing and so, too, are some other players,” he declared.

Costas also took issue with Trump’s take on targeting calls in football and, before he laid bare arguments used to declare football a dying sport, he mocked Trump supporters as having been stricken with brain damage themselves:

By the way, this is not as important. But in his comments in Alabama, Trump went on to say that they're ruining the NFL. There's not enough hitting. They're, I says, sissifying the game. You wonder how many times people who believe that have themselves been hit in the head?

Near the back end of his extended New Day appearance, Costas defended his political commentaries that he’s delivered throughout his career:

When I commented about various issues, only occasionally on NBC, be it on football, or during the Olympics, it was never during the action. It was never at the expense of the action and the drama. Always in a little niche carved out when nothing else was going on in terms of the game itself, but you have to acknowledge these things, and you have to address them. They're important, and very often, because sports appeals across demographic lines, like nothing else, we live in a niche world. But the one thing that draws not only a large audience but a varied audience, outside of the Academy Awards and Emmy’s, I guess.

Here’s the relevant transcript from CNN’s New Day on September 25: