On Saturday, in a since-deleted Facebook post, Tommy Hunter, an elected member of the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners outside of Atlanta went off on Rep. John Lewis in the aftermath of Lewis’s comments about President Elect Donald Trump. The post, which was deleted by Monday morning but preserved via a screen grab taken by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, read as follows:
“John Lewis is a racist pig. There ain’t one political pundit that didn’t say on November 9 that this would be Demonrats EXACT response to Trump winning. Like I heard Rush, I believe say, Demonrats DO NOT live in reality. They believe they were right and THE REAL VOTES were wrong. What a bunch of idiots.”
According to the AJC, when Hunter deleted the post, he changed his Facebook privacy settings so that only “Friends and Followers” could see what he posts, including this, which he left up:
“John Lewis’ district is drawn to keep him in power. His wins are all illegitimate. How can other reps be concerned about working with him.”
One local legislator was quick to condemn Hunter on Twitter:
I’m ashamed he represents the GWINNETT portion of my district. https://t.co/NNfAY1FM3Z
— Dar’shun Kendrick (@DarshunKendrick) January 16, 2017
One of the AJC‘s reporters reached out to Hunter on Facebook chat, where he said that the “racist pig” comment was “probably an overreaction out of aggravation” even if he felt that Lewis “is using his fame as a way to continually divide the races and in this case standing on the very much unsubstantiated claim that the guy I voted for is racist and only won because of Russians hacking the election—which, of course, we all know didn’t occur.”
When LawNewz, Mediaite’s sister site, got a statement from Hunter, he reflected more on the reaction to his comments:
“Poor choice of words on my part out of frustration with Mr. Lewis calling my vote illegitimate. Problem is, you write them down you can’t get them back. I had to change settings because of folks that I know that read my posts. The storm will have to roll.”
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