Swedish politician resigns after suggesting someone should ‘shoot’ Trump
A municipal council member of a Swedish town called Kalmar has resigned due to a Facebook post he made asking if someone could “shoot” America’s new president, Donald Trump.
“I believed that Donald Trump would calm down after he became the president [of the US]. But how wrong I was! He exceeded my worst fears! Could anyone shoot him?” Swedish Social Democratic Party member Roland Peterson, a municipal official in Kalmar’s Soedermoere district, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday, though he removed it an hour later.
Nonetheless, Peterson decided to step down as member of both his party and the Soedermoere Municipal Council and Planning Board after making the post, announcing his resignation on Monday morning.
“After my blunder on Facebook, there is a risk that I will become a burden for the Social Democrats in Kalmar. I do not want it, so I chose to leave all my posts,” Peterson wrote in a letter to his party members, as cited by the local Oestra Smaland newspaper.
Person’s post provoked an angry reaction from his party members and fellow councilors.
“It is good that he [Peterson] removed it [the post],” councilor Johan Persson told Oestra Smalan, adding that people should “never call for violence” regardless of their opinion of Donald Trump or other issues.
The Social Democrats’ leader in Kalmar, Roger Holmberg, denounced the post as “inappropriate” and “idiotic,” while stressing that “even thinking about the idea of violence is completely wrong.” He told Swedish broadcaster STV that he had had a conversation with Peterson and said that new party members would receive training in working with social media.
Holmber said that Peterson “is deeply remorseful,” explaining that he “did not understand the impact of the post in the social media.”
Peterson told STV that he “would have never written” the post if he had considered the consequences, while promising he “will never do it again.” He also explained to Oestra Smalan that it was Trump’s environmental policy that had deeply upset him.
“He [Trump] risks the future of the entire Earth,” he said, adding that “now, when the world has started going in the right direction,” Trump plans to increase oil and coal production.
Trump’s ideas about the environmental are a source of controversy in the US. Social media went into meltdown after Trump’s inauguration when certain hot topic issues disappeared from the White House website, including climate change.
Many mainstream media outlets initially reported on the conspicuous disappearances, but are adopting a more cautious ‘wait-and-see’ approach for the time being.
Anti-Trump angst was running high both in the US and abroad after his inauguration. On Saturday, Donald Trump’s first full day in the White House, thousands of women marched through US cities to protest Trump and call for the protection of civil liberties and diverse cultures.
Sister rallies took place in Japan, Australia, and Europe. Inauguration Day also witnessed violent clashes between anti-Trump protesters and Washington police.
