Aaron Rodgers says ‘there’s no MAGA movement’ in political rant

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers used an appearance on Not Just Football, the podcast hosted by his teammate Cam Heyward, to argue there is “no MAGA movement” left because President Trump has not delivered on his campaign promises.

“There is no MAGA movement; there is no ’Make America Great Again’ movement because the guy you elected hasn’t done any of his campaign promises,” the quarterback said. 

Mr. Rodgers directed similar criticism at former President Barack Obama, questioning whether Black Americans were better off after his presidency and, separately, whether the Affordable Care Act amounted to much more than an added tax. He then disparaged former President Joe Biden’s physical and political standing without naming him directly, before dismissing Mr. Trump’s second term as another four years without meaningful change. He summed up his view of the two-party system as fundamentally dishonest.

Mr. Rodgers also returned to his skepticism of the government’s COVID-19 response, a subject that has followed him since his vaccination status became public in 2021. He described the pandemic as a massive, coordinated effort to test how much control officials could exert over the public, pointing to closed beaches, arrested surfers and shuttered businesses in California as examples he considered disproportionate to any public-health rationale.

He extended that distrust to Washington broadly, describing Republicans and Democrats as functionally the same and saying he trusts almost no one in politics, citing former Rep. Ron Paul as a rare exception. Mr. Rodgers said he has drawn criticism from the left over his past friendliness with Mr. Obama and from the right over his opposition to vaccine mandates.

Mr. Rodgers also revisited his past support for Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who went unsigned after kneeling during the national anthem, calling him “one of the best 64 quarterbacks” in the league at the time, according to additional reporting on the interview.