The Colorado ACLU board member who suggested threatening violence against Donald Trump supporters has deleted the Facebook post where he made the comments and now claims they were somehow taken out of context.
As The Daily Caller reported Thursday evening, the board member’s name is Loring Wirbel.
Wirbel compared Trump to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, writing, “If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day” on his Facebook page. Wirbel has since deleted the original post.
“It’s very clear that wasn’t my belief, that we shouldn’t do that type of thing. That was all put together with comments from a bunch of other elements from other comments on other threads and presented as one unified whole as though I was doing the one advocating that trump supporters should be shot or anything, which is just not me. I don’t believe in violence against people,” he told KRDO.
“That looks to me like assembled political attack material,” Wirbel claimed, “That’s the only way I can describe it.”
Wirbel has not responded to a request for comment. The Colorado chapter of the ACLU and his employer The Linley Group have also not responded to requests for comment.
Below is TheDC’s screen capture of the post on Wirbel’s Facebook page.
Screen capture from Facebook
TheDC was first alerted to the Facebook comments from multiple Twitter users.
No fan of Trump, but if you are threatening to shoot his fans … you’re doing it wrong. Good catch @Daniel_J_W_Cole pic.twitter.com/JTvHn4Ur6P
— Aaron Gardner (@Aaron_RS) December 10, 2015
That is a screen capture from a mobile device, most likely an iPhone.
This is an actual statement by Loring Wirbel of Colorado Springs @ACLU calling for the shooting of Trump supporters pic.twitter.com/jXSLlqmI33
— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) December 11, 2015
It has the same number of “likes” as the original, but does not have any comments listed. It also has a date displayed with the day first, European style, and the time is displayed in military time. This indicates it was captured from a wholly separate third device.