A retired law enforcement officer, 61, who quoted Donald Trump on Facebook, spent more than a month in a Tennessee jail following Charlie Kirk's death. Officials in Perry County, somehow saw the meme quoting Trump on a community Facebook page as a threat of mass violence at a school. Larry Bushart was arrested and held on $2 million bail. The fuck your feelings party was all up in their feels following Kirk's shooting death.
Bushart's crime was quoting Trump when the president said, "We have to get over it," in response to a 2024 mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.
Bushart faced felony charges, even though Sheriff Nick Weems admitted the meme did not contain any threatening words that led investigators to think it was a real threat, according to NewsChannel5.
When word got around of Bushart's arrest, Weems said, “There’s been some very, very bad phone calls that my employees has had to endure.”
When the arresting officer informed Bushart that the warrant accused him of “threatening mass violence at a school," the one-time cop said, “At a school? I play on Facebook. I threatened no one.”
The New York Times reports:
In a televised interview with WTVF, Mr. Weems said that he believed that Mr. Bushart had “violated the law set forth by our legislature.” He was aware, he said, that the meme had been circulating long before Mr. Bushart shared it and that it was referring to the school shooting in Iowa.
“We knew,” he said. “The public did not know.”
The sheriff said Mr. Bushart had been charged after he refused to take the post down.
Here is the meme he posted that had him held on $2 million bail:
Law enforcement asked Bushart to delete the meme. He refused. And that's when he was arrested. Over a meme.
On a Justice for Larry Bushart Facebook page, a moderator writes, "Leanne, Larry's wife, just told me he is being released and the charges are being dropped! Pressure does work! I don't know the details, but I'll let you know when I do. I hope Larry and Leanne sue the pants off of them. He's lost 5 weeks of his life. Money is the only thing they understand."
Indeed. Bushart should launch a lawsuit against the police department. The law wasn't concerned after Trump said the words Bushart quoted after Dylan Butler shot five students and three staff members before killing himself at Perry High School. But Kirk's school shooting death was different in their minds.
