No. of Recommendations: 4
Tennessee just paid a retired cop $835,000 after he was put in jail for 37 days over a meme about Charlie Kirk. The meme quoted Donald Trump.
His name is Larry Bushart. He's 61, from Lexington, Tennessee, a retired law enforcement officer who also gave 24 years to the National Guard. After Charlie Kirk was killed in September 2025, Bushart shared some memes criticizing Kirk's organization. He didn't make them. He didn't threaten anyone. He clicked share.
For that, the Perry County sheriff's office arrested him, claimed his posts encouraged violence, and set his bail at $2 million.
Here's the meme that did it. It showed Trump next to the words "We have to get over it," explaining that Trump said exactly that after the 2024 school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa. The sheriff's excuse? Locals supposedly panicked, thinking it referenced their local Perry County High School.
Except the sheriff knew better. Sheriff Nick Weems admitted most of Bushart's memes were lawful free speech, and he knew the meme referred to the school in Iowa. He jailed a man anyway.
And it gets worse. Perry County schools had no records of any complaints about the post. The county couldn't produce any evidence of the "mass hysteria" the sheriff invented to justify the arrest.
While he sat in a cell for protected political speech, Bushart lost his post-retirement job, missed his wedding anniversary, and missed the birth of his granddaughter.
This is the part they don't want you to connect. The same movement that screams "free speech" every time it gets fact-checked will throw you in a cage for a meme. Bushart wasn't alone.
A Reuters investigation found that more than 600 Americans faced punishment for online speech after Kirk's death. The State Department even instructed consular officials to hunt down people who posted about it.
Freedom of speech, apparently, means freedom to agree with them.
Now Tennessee has agreed to pay Bushart $835,000 to settle his federal civil rights lawsuit. Your neighbors' tax dollars, spent because a sheriff decided a citizen's opinion was a crime.
A free country does not jail its people for what they post. It does not set million-dollar bail over a shared image. The right to speak without fear of a cell is not negotiable, and the moment we let the government decide which opinions get you locked up, none of us are free.
Bushart got vindicated, and the people who caged him pay nothing out of their own pockets. The next person might not be so lucky. From The Other 98%
