As Alabama residents prepared to protest Donald Trump on Saturday, Cleburne County Commissioner Mark Truett told his Facebook friends to arm themselves with pepper spray — if “cordless hole punchers are not your thing.”
“If you plan to be out and about this weekend, and cordless hole punchers are not your thing, I recommend going by Depot USA in Oxford, AL and getting some aerosol hot sauce,” Truett posted to his Facebook page. “Pay attention!”
Truett followed up the post in the comments with a link to a pepper spray product on Amazon, a link to the No Kings protest website, and a map of where planned protests were to take place in Alabama.
“Closest thing is Jacksonville. And Carrollton,” Truett added in later comments.
Jim Sterling, the leader of 50501 Calhoun County, said a mutual friend of him and Truett showed him the post.
“You can see he is going through the trouble of finding out where it is, and publishing it to his buddies who all have ‘cordless hole punchers’ or are talking about using pepper spray and wasp spray,” Sterling said. “I take this as very threatening … I felt it was threatening, meant to be threatening and I think it was meant to incite people to violence.”
Cleburne County Commissioner Mark Truett told his Facebook friends to arm themselves with pepper spray.
Truett told APR Wednesday that he wanted both sides to be armed in case hostilities broke out.
“I was concerned that a lot of people didn’t know a protest was taking place,” Truett said. “I stand firmly on everyone’s right to peacefully protest. I would hope that they would be prepared for anybody that might want to do harm to them; I have no ill will toward anybody on either side. My concern is for people’s safety on both sides.”
Truett confirmed to APR that “cordless hole puncher” is a euphemism for a gun, claiming that you cannot say the word “gun” on Facebook. In one comment on the thread, Truett also referred to a gun as a “subcutaneous heavy metal injection device.”
Truett said he didn’t know anything about this particular protest, but had concerns based on past protests that had “been on TV.”
One person who commented on Truett’s post specifically mentioned the protests in Los Angeles, where Trump has mobilized the National Guard and even sent Marines against the wishes of California officials.
“Got my hole puncher ready and a lil some,” the commenter said. “They just don’t understand the South isn’t LA, we don’t tolerate BS.”
“All the Kyle Rittenhouse’s STAND UP!!” wrote another commenter.
“My cordless hole puncher is EO. Men women and children. Rated E! for everyone,” wrote another.
