A retired Tennessee law enforcement officer was held in jail for more than a month this fall after police arrested him over a Facebook post of a meme related to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Prosecutors eventually dropped the criminal charge brought against Larry Bushart, but his stint behind bars came to exemplify the country’s tense political and legal climate following the tragedy, when conservatives sought to stymie public discourse about the late controversial figure that it saw as objectionable.
Now, Bushart is suing over his incarceration.
He quoted Trump saying ‘We need to just get over it’ about the Perry High School shooting in Iowa.
What he said wasn’t even hateful, it was a fucking quote.
Well, it was from Trump, so it was a pretty hateful quote, to be fair
Fair point
And not even close to encouraging breaking the law. I’ve heard politicians have essentially the same “let’s move on” attitude about school shootings.
All Kimmel did was play clips of trump.
I got in trouble with Facebook once for quoting Trump’s thing about how he could shoot someone without losing supporters. If it isn’t appropriate to say on Facebook, it isn’t appropriate to say in a presidential campaign!
This news story existing a decade ago would have broke the minds of most Americans. Even those that support Trump now. It’s amazing how the slow trickle of Fascism is normalized in society.
As he should, absolutely his first amendment right was violated.
If the right can spout pure hatred and bullshit with impunity, so can everyone else.
It’s not even hatred. It’s a quote from the ‘president’ about a similar event, that had more and younger victims.
He is the right wing. It was a meme of hate supporting kirk.
He isn’t, it wasn’t, and you’re an asshole.
It was a picture of Trump with a quote that he had said about a school shooting saying “We have to get over it”. This guy also added “This Seems Relevant”
(From the article)
This is the image they jailed him for.
This should be a slam dunk win for him. Blatant political retribution. The people who jailed him should be jailed, disbarred, fined, etc., the citizens shouldn’t have to pay the court award for their fascism.
May I say thanks for the pixelation. I’m serious, it’s tiring looking at his ugly clueless face all the time.
alexandria ocasio-cortez looks a bit better than trump. seriously!
Are you some kind of spam account? Seriously?
i actually have autism which is why i type like that. seriously!
The US has lost their license to roast us (the rest of the world) for saying mean things on the internet and getting a vist from the police. Welcome to the club you fat bitch.
I don’t know what planet you live on but it’s the rest of the world roasting the US.
Free speech was always an Americans roasting the rest of the world thing I’m not sure how you can deny that. We must live on different planets. It has only recently become reversed recently with trump being a dictator.
Free speech was always an Americans roasting the rest of the world thing I’m not sure how you can deny that.
What does that even mean? We’re not the only country with concepts of free speech. The Enlightenment happened in Europe and some of those ideas are there as well and they can and do use it to roast the US.
Grammatically, I don’t know what “always an Americans” means. I’m not sure if you know how to use punctuation.
It has only recently become reversed recently with trump being a dictator.
Completely wrong. The US has been criticized before and generally rightly so. Although in your case, it seems to be based more on ignorance and bigotry than anything.
Its not that serious. This is not an actual analysis on free speech. I am not saying Americans are the only ones with free speech god dam. Its just a joke about a common online joke.
…
Then they came for the retired law enforcement
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At least he is American and can sue. Some immigrants were deported and had their lives destroyed just because they had their opinions
Turns out being a cop doesn’t protect you from the regime.
Wish all the law enforcement officers who voted for a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist realized that before voting for a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.
Was there ever a time that Republicans actually stayed true to their principles when it wasn’t to their advantage?
In my life experience I honestly can’t think of a time.
Almost 100% of the time actually. You gotta think, what are republican principles? The answer is hate and bigotry, and the vast majority have stuck to that in spades.
1860
I think you might need to learn less civil war mythology and more actual history.
They weren’t holding up to their principals then either, the whole thing was genuinely about states rights they just said their rights overruled other states rights because ownership of property didn’t change via interstate travel.
It’s far more stupid then most textbooks imply.
To retain ownership across state lines where the property is considered a limited person in the other state. What part of this makes you think I do not know the property in question were people, that isn’t however why the feds got involved. State sovereignity was. Even after emancipation it was still legal to own people and still technically is to this day as slavery was never outlawed it was simply limited. To add to that children were still held as property until I want to say 1930 to the point that the first successful children’s welfare group was the goddamn ASPCA arguing children are property like livestock that it’s morally and economically unreasonable to abuse.
Your myopic and arguably ignorant meme usage and is implication is exactly what I mean by mythology.
To retain ownership across state lines where the property is considered a limited person in the other state.
But that wouldn’t work for say heroin.
If your state says heroin is legal and the fed says it’s illegal, you can’t really leave your state and still legally be in possession of it.
I guess you could claim you own a person in a red state but once they leave, you no longer own them?
Wasn’t that the red states’ whole complaint? That their slaves shouldn’t be considered free men once they leave?
So in conclusion, the whole states rights argument doesn’t work because what they actually wanted was to have their state’s laws apply across the country.
And this doesn’t even talk about the moral issues which imo and most people’s opinion should override the above logic anyway.
That was an actual issue in America, nice of you to point that out for me and it’s also why drug prohibition was federalized.
Correct, that was their property right claim. It’s nonsensical but quite a lot of wars are over nonsensical shit.
So in conclusion, the whole states rights argument doesn’t work because what they actually wanted was to have their state’s laws apply across the country.
No one said it worked, they fought and lost a war about it but that doesn’t actually make it not their argument nor does it imply we shouldn’t teach that property rights across state lines were the cause of the civil war, not in particular slavery as slavery was never outlawed and people were still considered property until well into the 1900s.
Nuance is sometimes difficult to deal with but that doesn’t mean we should pare away inconvenient truths.
Morality is subjective and therefore difficult to argue which is why they fought it as a property rights issue instead.
Naw, the meme holds: “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution”.
south caronlina seceded because of state’s rights to slavery. Almost all articles of secession had the same language. Have some history.
No one said the meme was wrong, I said it was myopic.
But it isn’t. It is right on point. Even the secession articles say it out loud. The fight was over slavery.
Insightful rebuttal.
Thanks man
Ah, I see you had a history class in a “lost cause revisionist” state.
It’s an actual fact bud. It may not be one you like but it’s a fact none the less.
Our new government['s]…foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Saying the civil war was about states rights is like saying the Holocaust was completely legal.
Both positions are factually correct, but it completely misses the inhuman and immoral pretexts that lead to those actions. The American civil war was about slavers trying to prolong their lifestyle of abusing other human beings regardless of what the laws of the country were. They saw that slavery was going away, and they responded by starting a war of secession.
It was. Read a book, no one is saying they weren’t also racists or that they the state right they wanted preserved was property rights over people in interstate travel.
positions are factually correct, but it completely misses the inhuman and immoral pretexts that lead to those actions.
Duh, I went over that specifically and at length.
I literally quoted
Jefferson DavisAlexander Stephens (VP of the Confederacy) a month into the Confederacy. You should go read a fucking history book. Racism and slavery was the foundation of the Confederacy, as stated by the people that started it. States rights is a bullshit excuse. The confederate states wanted to force non-slave states to return escaped slaves, despite them have the rights (specifically a state right) not to return human beings to slavers. Fuck off with this fake ass daughter of the Confederacy propaganda.Edit : Fixed cornerstone speech attribution.
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Traitors clearly, I’m legitimately amazed you think knowing history is supporting the Confederacy. I know quite a bit about WW2 and want that taught directly as well, does that make me a Nazi?
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You don’t want to put words in my mouth but you advise me of being devil’s advocate and imply I’m a racist or Confederate supporter. You’re full of shit.
Because that’s how it was fucking started read a goddamn history book. Or I dunno if you need it dumbed down watch the John Oliver bit on it.
https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/archives/documents/jefferson-davis-resolutions-relations-states
As for himself, he asserted, “I shall die, as I have lived, firm in the State rights faith.” He told an appreciative audience of Southerners in 1882: “Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known all that was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.”
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Kirk hasn’t said anything racist in a while.
Now that the emotion has died down and I can look at Charlie Kirk’s assassination as a whole and what came of it, i can confidently say that the world feels slightly better without Charlie Kirk in it. I don’t mourn him.
I said it from the start and stand by it: however you feel about political assassination aside, Kirk was one of the only right-wing media figures who had a chance of keeping Trump’s political capital alive, as in, he was one of the few people with the charisma and messaging skill that he could charm MAGA’s into shifting tone to follow his lead.
Who else is going to hold onto a segment of America who are violently stupid, armed, patriotic, and have the attention spans of gnats and each think themselves to be some kind of comic book hero? Trump was able to capture them because he seemed genuine even though it was genuine hate and anger. Kirk could have kept the hate and anger alive under a skin of righteousness and Christian ideology that would have absolutely caught on in midwest America like fire through dry brush if the GOP decided to go whole-hog and fund him in the coming years.
We averted a massive problem with Kirk, and the way everyone around him is currently grasping for shreds of that political capital as it evaporates into the wind just further reinforces what I believe.
Looks like we found a cure for racism
Excited to be in the Supermax Prison built entirely for people who reposted illegal memes.
There will be an entire cell block for people that post this.
The former police officer shared a meme on Facebook about a vigil being held in Tennessee for Kirk.
“This seems relevant today,” read the meme, which included a photo of Trump and a quote the then-candidate made in 2024 following a shooting at Perry High School in Des Moines, Iowa.
“We have to get over it,” Trump is quoted as saying in the meme.
Four officers came to Bushart’s home the next day, arrested him and took him to jail for “threatening mass violence at a school.” Authorities at the time said that the post was understood locally to be a threat to an area school that has a similar name to the one where the 2024 shooting occurred, according to court records.
“When Mr. Bushart posted the meme, he had no inkling or reason to think that anyone would take it as a threat of violence. And unsurprisingly, defendants … have produced no evidence that any person interpreted the meme as a threat,” the lawsuit states. “In fact, the Perry County School District has no records at all concerning Mr. Bushart or the meme.”
And there are people in this country who may still see nothing wrong with this, because it involves their dear blameless president.
I never thought I’d side with a retired Tennessee cop, but here I am
The worst part is the sheriff literally not understanding what’s wrong with his actions.
Oh he knew. He just doesn’t care. No repercussions and the municipality will pay the settlement. Just another day in freedumbville.
Meanwhile, republican politicians get away with saying the most vile shit about people with mental illnesses, minorities, the poor and women, as usual. The hypocritical circus is never ending.
Thought you said people?
/s
This is the way.
If fucking Nazis are still permitted to go on marches (and that’s the typical case discussed) then someone sure as FUCK can say whatever they want about some asshat like Kirk passing away…
