The woman who lost her job this week after giving the middle finger to President Donald Trump’s motorcade is speaking out about being unfairly terminated.
Julie Briskman, who became an online legend for flipping off the Trump motorcade as it returned from Trump national Golf Club Oct. 29, made her first live TV appearance on “MSNBC Live With Katy Tur” Wednesday.
“It was a spur of the moment decision,” Briskman said of her bike-ride gesture. “Lots of things were going through my mind about how disappointed I am with this administration. I didn’t really have any other way to express my opinion to Mr. Trump, and so the finger was what I had at the time.”
“POTUS’s motorcade departed the Trump National Golf Club at 3.12pm, passing two pedestrians, one of whom gave a thumbs-down sign. Then it overtook a female cyclist, wearing a white top and cycling helmet, who responded by giving the middle finger,” according to the pool reporter on duty that day.
“The motorcade had to slow and the cyclist caught up, still offering the finger, before turning off in a different direction. Motorcade is now gathering speed and heading for DC.”
At the time, Briskman was working for Akima LLC, a Virginia-based company that holds several government contracts, doing marketing and communications work. As the photo went viral with users calling her a “heroine,” and “#SHero,” Briskman’s bosses called her into a meeting Tuesday and gave her the bad news. The company said “Basically, you cannot have ‘lewd’ or ‘obscene’ things in your social media. So they were calling flipping him off ‘obscene,'” Briskman told The Huffington Post.
What irks Briskman is that another employee at Akima made political comments on Facebook, but was able to keep his job.
“There was another person that I highlighted to the company had posted lewd and obscene comments on a feed and he was told to clean up his Facebook, and was allowed to keep his job,” Briskman said on MSNBC. Tur pointed out that the unnamed employees offensive Facebook posts included “swear words and calling somebody a libtard.”
“I don’t really know why my treatment was different than this other person’s treatment. I think the com have to answer that question and I really would like them to
Despite her termination, Briskman said she doesn’t regret her actions, and that said she really doesn’t want to work for a company that doesn’t share her values.
“I think I’ve come to learn that this company doesn’t have the same values as me. I need to go work for a place or a cause that has the same values.” Briskman added that she has a lot of messages to answer, needs to respond to around 1,000 Facebook friend requests, and gained more than 15,000 Twitter followers since the incident.
Follow Thomas Phippen on Twitter
Send tips to thomas@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.