North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper‘s wife, Kristin Cooper, apologized on Thursday for a since-deleted Facebook comment in which she admitted to giving the middle finger to children at a protest, WRAL reported.
“My personal Facebook comments and actions leading to it were inappropriate, and I am so sorry,” she said. “I apologize to anyone I may have hurt, and I ask for forgiveness.”
The pro-law-enforcement rally to Back the Blue and get Christians to vote for President Donald Trump on Sunday had about 60 people in attendance, including families with children.
“There was a pitiful family group waving those flags by the Capitol today,” Kristin Cooper wrote on Facebook. “I flipped them off and told them to go home. Was flipping off a brainwashed kid my finest hour? Probably not, but I can live with it.”
Later in the post, she called the group a “bunch of clowns.”
Someone sent a screenshot of the post to Michelle Morrow, the woman who organized the protest at the State Capitol.
“She said it wasn’t her proudest moment, but that [she] could not tolerate pathetic clowns and what we were doing on the State Capitol,” said Morrow.
Cooper wasn’t the only one harassing the peaceful protesters that day.
“There were a lot of people that said ‘F Trump’ and ‘F the police.’ There were a lot of people screaming to go home,” Morrow said.
“We just assumed it was people who are angry or they’re fearful and they’re just immature and that’s how they’re going to express themselves, so we just moved along and didn’t engage them,” she added.
She did not realize until afterward that one middle finger came from North Carolina’s First Lady.
Morrow’s son Matthew, 8, was at the rally, too.
“He was the young boy who was holding the ‘Back the Blue’ flag on Sunday,” she said.
Cooper’s statement that she could not tolerate pro-police, pro-Trump citizens shocked Morrow.
It is “startling for the First Lady of North Carolina because as every North Carolina citizen, we should be concerned about our religious liberties and about the right to peacefully assembly and about our First Amendment right to speak,” she said.
Morrow said she requested a meeting with Cooper, but there has not been a response.
