J.D. Martinez is standing by his Hitler Instagram post, maintaining that he was defending the second amendment.
The Red Sox slugger spoke to the media on Tuesday, according to multiple reports, responding to his social media post from 2013 with the quote, “To conquer a nation, first disarm it’s (sic) citizens” overlaid on a picture of Hitler. Martinez had captioned the photo “This is why I always stay strapped! #thetruth.”
“I love my country. I stand by the Constitution and I stand by the second amendment,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s something I take pride in and it’s something I’ll back up.”
Martinez also spoke about his Cuban roots, and the effect Fidel Castro’s dictatorship had on his family.
“As most of you guys know I’m Cuban-American, and most of my family was run out of Cuba because of a brutal dictator,” Martinez said, according to The Providence Journal. “It’s terrible. It’s one of those things where I’ll never get to meet some of my family because of it.”
The major league leader in RBI did not seem to regret the post from five years ago, though, saying it’s become common to go digging for old social media posts. He also said this is “why I don’t talk about politics,” despite the political nature of the Instagram post.
“Everybody has a right to stand by what they believe in and that’s what makes us American,” Martinez said. “We’re not all going to believe in the same things, but that’s what makes this country so great.”
