Man Who Threatened to Lynch Obama Doesn't Get Why People Say He's Racist

Jeff Gullickson was very upset when Obama joined Twitter. So upset, in fact, that he immediately fired off a few tweets to let the President know exactly what he thought of him and his policies. Now, the Minnesota man is out of a job and being called a racist, which he says is a mistake. According to Gullickson, his threat to lynch Obama shouldn’t have been taken in a racist way.

Raw Story reports that Gullickson sent two tweets to Obama before they were picked up for a piece highlighting the kind of vitriol got on Twitter in The New York Times.

From Raw Story:

The paper singled out Jeff Gullickson for posting an image of Obama with a noose around his neck.

“[H]ope to see you hang soon you treasonous fraud,” he tweeted in one message.

“[W]e need ‘ROPE FOR CHANGE’ we still hang for treason don’t we?” another post said.

The Secret Service has confirmed that it’s investigating Gullickson’s tweets, but while it’s not known whether he’ll suffer any legal repercussions for his words, he’s certainly feeling the effects of his actions via public opinion and the loss of his job. But he claims that he never made any racist remarks. That whole hanging Obama thing? That has nothing to do with him being black, it’s all about his awful political beliefs.

From MPR:

“My only regret is being called racist when my opinion of the president has more to do with [Obama] being a communist as opposed to being black,” he wrote to MPR News.

Really? His only regret?

Gullickson is even planning to sue the bargain auto lot where he used to work until the tweets were discovered. The company claims that they didn’t fire him for his social media use, but according to a lawyer, Gullickson’s not going to win a lawsuit even if they did.

From MPR:

Minneapolis employment lawyer John Klassen said it’s very unlikely that Gullickson will receive legal compensation for his termination in this case.

“I would certainly think that it’s within the rights of the dealership to fire an employee who posts racist tweets about our president, or racist tweets about anybody,” Klassen said. “That’s just the kind of conduct that the law is not going to protect as some sort of First Amendment right.”

I guess maybe don’t tweet about killing people in a historically racist context then? Or, better yet, follow the philosophy of Emma Carmichael, Jezebel’s EIC and “never tweet.”