Teacher Fired After Expressing Support for President Trump on Twitter
We’ve legitimately lost count of the number of stories we’ve seen over the last four years where some public school teacher or university professor makes an abhorrent remark about President Donald Trump and his supporters on social media with absolutely zero ramifications. We barely even pay attention to these stories anymore unless the teacher is expressing something truly reprehensible like the genocide of all white men. Beyond that, it’s just part of the background landscape; that’s how common it has become.
Say something truly controversial like “trans women aren’t actually women,” though, and you’ll be in the unemployment line before you can check your replies.
But that’s not the only statement of fact that can get you in trouble. Just ask Michigan teacher Justin Kucera. He lost his job after posting this harmless tweet: “I’m done being silent. @realDonaldTrump is our president. Don’t @ me.”
Hmm, that tweet is not only completely uncontroversial, we’d say it’s pretty damn near inarguable. Donald Trump IS our president, whether you like him or not.
But the Walled Lake School District was so taken aback by Kucera’s support for the president that they gave him two choices: Resign or be fired.
“I was required to meet with HR, the superintendent, and my principal,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. “They initially took my statement on why I tweeted those tweets and they told me they would have a decision about my future employment in the upcoming days. When they completed the meeting, I was told I had the option to either be fired or resign.”
Parents and students at Walled Lake told the Free Beacon that Kucera never tried to bring his politics into the classroom. Indeed, they commended him for going out of his way to turn his classroom into a space for fair-minded, rational debate on current events. And in his own conversation with the outlet, Kucera said that even the tweet in question was meant to bring people together rather than split them into groups.
“I know a lot of people are just rooting for Trump to fail, and I don’t think that anybody should do that,” Kucera said. “Agree with him or not, you should want the president to do well. I apologized that [my tweet] brought so much negative attention, but I’m not sorry for what I said.”
It’s absurd that a man should lose his job for something as mild as supporting the sitting president…but when it comes to today’s cancel culture, literally nothing surprises us anymore.