Ein Mann aus Tennessee, der wegen eines Anti-Trump-Memes zu 37 Tagen Gefängnis verurteilt wurde, erhält 835.000 US-Dollar für seine Probleme
https://reason.com/2026/05/20/a-tennessee-man-jailed-for-37-days-because-of-an-anti-trump-meme-will-get-835000-for-his-trouble/
31 Kommentare
Snippet:
* Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems preposterously claimed that Larry Bushart had threatened „mass violence“ at a school.
* Last year, Larry Bushart spent 37 days in a Tennessee jail because he had shared a widely circulated anti-Trump meme on Facebook. Today his attorneys announced that he had agreed to settle the resulting federal lawsuit in exchange for a payment of $835,000.
* „No one should be hauled off to jail in the dark of night over a harmless meme just because the authorities disagree with its message,“ said Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which represented Bushart along with local attorney Katherine Phillips. „We’re pleased that Larry has been compensated for this injustice, but local law enforcement never should have forced him to endure this ordeal in the first place.“
* The meme in question, which Bushart posted on September 20 in response to a Facebook announcement of a candlelight vigil for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk at the Perry County Courthouse, featured a photo of President Donald Trump flanked by a quote from a speech he gave at a campaign rally in Iowa on January 5, 2024. The day before, a gunman had killed two people and injured six others at a high school in Perry, Iowa.
# EDITED TO ADD:
And, **THIS** was the meme he was arrested for and jailed for 37 days!!🙄
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HI0Lz7MXYAALEBM.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HI0Lz7MXYAALEBM.jpg)
Man. Nowhere else on Earth is there a greater divide between the rhetoric of pure freedom, and the actual behaviour, which is authoritarian bootlicking.
RE: The lawsuit
And, while I’m happy he’s getting something for the asinine decision and for his troubles (understatement, I know), just remember that **EVERY** incompetent (and inhumane) screw-up by THIS administration that results in a federal lawsuit (with a monetary payout or no) means, WE, the taxpayers have to ultimately pay!!🙄
Edited to add: Including state lawsuits!
I’m glad this dude won
The people who arrested him should lose their jobs and their pensions, and be facing charges for false imprisonment.
The judge who didn’t IMMEDIATELY throw this case out, should be censured and removed, losing their pension as well.
Tax payers foot the bill.
I think these headlines should focus on the fact that the taxpayers are on the hook because some unqualified manbaby was hired as a cop and blatantly broke the law
I’ll go to jail for 37 days for $835,000!
Fuck you Donald J Trump!
That meme payed out better than any NFT, call wallstreetbets put everything on trashing trump and his gestapo.
$22,500 for every night dude stayed in jail. Not a bad payout. Shouldn’t have ever came to this though. 1st amendment has been under attack since Trump’s first term.
*This* is your first amendment. Freedom from arrest for criticizing the government.
One of many to come over the next several years. Wait until we no longer have Trump’s DoJ in power. The lawsuits will flow like water and make $835k seem like Pennie’s on the dollar. The immigrants locked up in these concentration camps will eventually file lawsuits and they will get PAID. Kim’s Abrego Garcia, if he can stay in the country long enough, will make millions on his lawsuit.
America could literally pay out over a billion dollars in settlements.
Not enough consequences. We need serious people in control of government who aren’t going to fuck around the way we’ve been doing since Reconstruction.
Now peoples will make anti-Trump memes and get paid for it. Best paid job ever.
Trump/Maga/conservatives are the most baby shit, soft-ass motherfuckers on the planet.
seems like $1.8B would be more appropriate
‚ thanks for paying my house off, FUCKERS‘ anyways. *posts another meme*
Only 835k? I tink losing your freedom for a month is worth a little more. Like around 10 billion. He’d probably settle for 1.7 though.
That’s not nearly enough. He should get the balance of the Police and the DA’s pension fund.
This money should come out of the pensions and paychecks of the people who arrested and prosecuted him. Not from the taxpayers.
Any consequences for this sheriff for this insane, incompetent and costly abuse of power and violation of rights?
Hopefully he fills out an application for the 1776 fund. I say give him millions.
He should get $1.7B
Infinite money glitch
Yay Im paying for more of Trumps tantrums
Soon on Ask Reddit: Would you stay in jail for 37 days for $835k?
If they’re gonna jail people for anti-Trump memes, they’re gonna need a lot more jails.
Crazy, he was blatantly arrested for exercising his Freedom of Speech due to the contents of what he said while authorities knew what he said could not, in any way be, interpreted as a threat.
He should get more money, the police who arrested him should be charged, and any higher ups that kept this going should be fired and banned from public service for the rest of their lives.
This needed to be a huge punishment to reverse the creeping authoritarian tendencies that has been permeating since a certain someone took office.
So many illiterate MAGAts are claiming this is the same concept as the slush fund that Trump is trying to use to pay his allies.
Wake me when he actually gets the money
Charlie Kirk had to expect people to make memes of him when he stuck his neck out like that.