‘Am I perfect? No. We’re all a little flawed…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A California mayor resigned on Monday after facing backlash for comments he made online comparing President Donald Trump’s supporters to the Ku Klux Klan and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.
Auburn Mayor William Kirby posted a picture of a hooded KKK member on Facebook that stated, “Good news for Trump supporters is that most of them already have masks” (see below).
Kirby, whose Facebook account is no longer publicly visible, shared the apparent meme image with his own commentary saying, “True.”
Another post showed Kirby telling another social media user: “If Hitler and everyone who supported him was removed from the face of the earth in 1939, the world would be a much better place. The same is more true of Trump and his supporters today.”
Kirby also commented on a re-post of an Atlantic article and said, “That right-wing corona virus denier Borish Johnson just got hospitalized. Guess which 2 should be next!!!! And god bless all those evangelicals going to church in large groups….There is no cure for stupid….But they all vote for Trump anyways so it is ok….” he wrote, according to the Auburn Journal.
Kirby was also regularly involved in heated online exchanges, according to several screenshots. In one exchange, he tells another user, “F*** off you right-wing nut case,” and calls the user an “un-American Nazi clown.”
When confronted, Kirby admitted to the Auburn City Council that his comments were “over-the-top,” but he did not apologize.
“I spent 40 years dedicating my life to serving the community of Auburn as a physician and through my volunteer efforts. Am I perfect? No. We’re all a little flawed,” Kirby said, according to KDVR-TV.
Kirby then tried to blame his comments on Trump: “The president has put us all at risk,” he said. “I believe history will judge those who stood up against damaging policies and ideologies and those that did not.”
But after the other city council members and dozens of Auburn citizens demanded Kirby’s resignation, Kirby agreed to step down at the next city council meeting on April 27. He has continued to defend his comments, arguing that they were unrelated to his mayoral duties.
“[Facebook] is not a city site. It’s a personal site. This has nothing to do with my job. I re-posted it. I think [Trump] is a racist, absolutely,” he told the Auburn Journal.