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.
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.
And this guy was a retired cop. Nobody is safe.
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 such an egregious violation of his rights that he should sue for millions because he’ll get it.
(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.
Are you fucking kidding me? He simply quoted Trump and got jail time? What a fucking joke.
Thou shall not offend the Dear Leader!
May I say thanks for the pixelation. I’m serious, it’s tiring looking at his ugly clueless face all the time.
It’s amazing how expressive that face is, simultaneously conveying limitless malice and stupidity. The face of a child rapist? It’s believable.
He is like a living testament to the Roald Dahl aphorism about thinking evil thoughts making you look evil.
Even Bob Gale, who had access to a real time machine when penning Back to the Future 2, had to dial back how Biff Tannen represented Trump to get a PG rating. Meanwhile a documentary about our sitting president that only tells objective facts could potentially get an NC-17. Guess that’s why the voting age is 18.
somebody’ll come by and removed about censorship in 3…2…
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!
Too bad he was retired otherwise he would’ve only been suspended for a month with full pay. /s I hope he gets a shitload of money for being subject to the thought police hypocrisy.
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
The same guy who said Rob Reiner “died due to TDS”?
Its OK when Chavez he president does it
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.
Some politicians wear AR-15 pins. I wish I was joking.
Just because we’re leftists doesn’t mean we have to be AK fanboys. AR-15s are good rifles too.
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!
I created a Facebook page called “Fled Cruz”, the profile picture was Rafael “Ted” Cruz and the only thing I posted was quotes of his tweets, Facebook shut it down for hate speech. They denied the appeal and deleted the entire page.
Fuck the Zuck
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.
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.
Cops often grew up under similar circumstances to many people who joined gangs. Being a cop is just being part of the biggest most untouchable gang of them all.
Most PDs are the biggest criminal organization in their city.
Well, let’s be real, BANKERS are the biggest most untouchable gang!
Yeah, but cops utilize actual physical violence. They are thugs.
Guess who pays the cops?
Yup I hear they’re as untouchable as health insurance ceo’s. Hmm I guess when I think about most powerful people are.
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.
Who else is going to hold onto a segment of America
You left out aggressively ignorant.
Looks like we found a cure for racism
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…
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”
Perfect username lol.
No.
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 removed.
I assure you the United States has both people who will continue to try making that roast, and people who never felt like they had that freedom in the first place.
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.
I never thought I’d side with a retired Tennessee cop, but here I am
It’s been a rough year
…
Then they came for the retired law enforcement
…
And I said nothing because ACAB
Okay, that’s pretty funny.
I do wonder, if the roles were reversed, would he have refused orders to make the arrest?
No, the answer is no, he would not have refused orders
ACAB
This dude literally kept his chin up and went to jail after multiple threats. I’m not ignorant about more than a couple bad apples. I understand the implicit complicity of by standing quietly. I don’t need the lectures, so let’s focus and not whatabout. This single person, is not a bastard. Say what you will, but bastards equals no greater than all minus one, bc this dude. Wrong fucking thread.
‘A couple bad apples’ isn’t an excuse for bad cops, that’s the complete opposite of what the phrase means.
It’s “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch”. It works like that for literal apples and for cops too. Even if a cop doesn’t go around crushing necks with his knees, if he’s willing to tolerate the bad cops that do that makes him a bad cop too.
Good cops don’t survive to retirement. This particular guy is completely right in this situation, but ACAB is still true
ACAB is saying that a system creates bad people; it takes what could have been good and morphs them due to corruption and inherent injustice.
No matter how good the dude, if they follow through on evil orders, they’ve committed an evil act. And you can’t tell me that this (otherwise good and moral dude) didn’t follow don’t evil orders at some point
I guarantee that as a cop, he committed some terrible shit acts that would make you sad. In the name of the law. And therefore, ACAB.
You do?
At least he is American and can sue. Some immigrants were deported and had their lives destroyed just because they had their opinions
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.
The only principle of any conservative is more money and power to the owning class. Everything beyond that is tactics.
I just read a paper saying that one of the primary objectives of Conservatism has always been to cover up Pedophilia. Many of their members are wealthy, and have transcended normal sexual behavior into more exotic forms, including pedophilia. They know the Dems would throw them under the bus immediately, but the Conservatives will circle the wagons. The Epstein Files is the example that proves the point.
I think you give Democratic politicians too much credit but the base definitely won’t apologize for it like the conservative base will
until someone sends them hate for their political actions; or they find some fringe group that hates ALL men / ALL white people, and conservatives lose their shit over that for years.
Like 60+ years ago, before the Southern Strategy, yes.
They have been corrupt selfish assholes my entire life.
Which principles?
Loyalty and obedience to the Rich and powerful.
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.
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.
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.
Everyone knows that owning other people is a topic with such significant moral subjectivity, so talking about racially justified ownership of other humans really emphasizes the need to have a nuanced perspective on property ownership.
Think about how you sound.
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
youre fucking dumb lmao
Read a history book those are all facts. Sure repubs were the “good guys” at the moment but that too is warped, Lincoln was against immediate emancipation but for slow rolling emancipation.
Look it up, the mythology behind the civil war in this country is fuckin wild.
youre fucking dumb and any conversation about the civil war, states rights, and property that does not mention slaves and that people are not property is disingenuous and fucking stupid. youre a fucking moron lol like fr? it was about states not recognizing property? you fucking clown lmao it was about (southern) states not recognizing people
Yeah, I’m pretty sick of the “It was a different time” bullshit too. It was not about property because people are not property, and humans decided that slavery is wrong LONG before the Civil War. Look in the fucking Bible, the most disseminated piece of literature of all time, and the book that many dumbasses say the US was founded on.
I don’t believe people are property but we aren’t talking about what I believe we’re talking about how the civil war was framed and specifically the mythology it’s evolved into. Sure sane people don’t believe slavery is a righteous endeavor but clearly that’s not changed anything today nor in the past given that slavery hasn’t ended globally and in the US slavery specifically and legislatively isn’t illegal in certain instances like lawful imprisonment, again mythology.
it was about states not recognizing property? you fucking clown lmao it was about (southern) states not recognizing people
No it wasn’t. Emancipation is the outcome not the cause, even after Sumter was attacked Lincoln refused to act on slavery. The feds got involved to preserve state sovereignity and reenforce Lincoln’s position that states did not have the right to secede. Slavery was certainly involved it wasn’t however the cause of federal intervention.
You’re pushing American mythology and ignoring the factual basis for federal involvement. Did you never wonder why Lincoln went with essentially an executive order (that by the way lost him 30+ Republican seats in Congress) rather than passing an amendment rather then passing an amendment first? It’s because he didn’t have the support needed to pass it because the North was also racist and also wanted to keep slaves they just wanted a different mechanism for gaining and keeping slaves ie. Lawful imprisonment.
That’s clearly the property that was being referred to, I’m sorry I didn’t specifically spell that out for you.
It was about states rights, they just framed it as interstate property rights because slaves were property. Again I apologize for not pandering to the dumbest among us but you’re making a good point that I shouldn’t discount just how dumb people can be.
do you support the “lost cause” of the confederacy?
…said the devil’s advocate supporter
No one is sitting anything but teaching history instead of mythology. Though I do think you might need to work on your teaching comprehension if you got support or of anything I’ve said.
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what do you think of the confederacy?
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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