FINAL UPDATE? Man arrested for posting Trump meme wins $835,000!

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Do you remember this clueless sheriff who was involved in getting a man arrested for posting a meme? Allow me to refresh your memory because there's now what looks like it could be the final update on this. There has been a settlement. He's been here for 35 days.

[00:00:14]35 days?

[00:00:15]>> Mhm. Uh-huh. Over a meme? So here is the meme in question. More will be explained about it in a bit. This is another update video, so if you're all caught up with the case, skip ahead to about 11 minutes and 49 seconds. Otherwise, keep watching. There are a lot of exceptions to free speech. The most relevant one here is what is called a true threat.

[00:00:36]The Supreme Court has said that true threats are not protected by the First Amendment because there's a need to protect people from fear of violence and to prevent the disruption that the fear causes and to protect from the possibility that the threats will actually happen. A true threat is essentially a statement that frightens someone into believing that they will be seriously harmed. Speech will not be protected if the person consciously disregarded a substantial risk that their communications would be viewed as threatening violence. However, political hyperbole does not count as a true threat. Take the case of Watts versus US where a man said, "I quote, I have already received my draft classification. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ."

[00:01:19]The Supreme Court ruled that this was political hyperbole and was not a true threat and thus was protected speech.

[00:01:25]The court will look to factors like the context of the speech, the conditional nature of the supposed threat, and the reaction of the recipients or listeners.

[00:01:34]Are the people laughing? Are they taking it seriously, etc. To me, the Watts case seems more like a true threat than the Facebook meme here. And the speech in the Watts case is considered protected.

[00:01:46]So keep that in mind as you continue to watch. There are other speech exceptions like fighting words and incitement to violence that I won't get into because the true threats doctrine is the one that seems the most salient to me. And was considered a threatening.

[00:02:01]Apparently, this meme was posted as part of a discussion about Charlie Kirk's assassination. The man who posted it is a frequent memer and political poster, I guess. It was a Trump quote after a shooting in Perry, Iowa. The sheriff claims that some people in his community took it as a threat related to their high school, Perry County High School in Tennessee. I'll link more news reports in the description if you want more details on this.

[00:02:25]Do I really need to even explain how ridiculous this is? And just because you have a warrant or something like that doesn't make your actions justified. Any cop involved in this man's arrest should be ashamed of themselves. Just following orders is not an excuse. This absolutely makes my blood boil. And this will chill speech in Tennessee, if not elsewhere, too. Should I even be posting this video? Is the government going to consider my words here a true threat and arrest me? This has far-reaching implications beyond just this individual man. This will chill speech beyond just him, especially because it seems to me that the government and the cops here are totally disregarding the law. They don't care what the Supreme Court has said about free speech. They're still going to arrest you. No one even replied to that one meme. No one said this is a threat against our school. No, no one even mentioned it.

[00:03:16]And the sheriff is claiming this all could have been avoided if the man had just deleted his free speech, if he would have just deleted the meme in question. Ah, yes, blame the victim.

[00:03:24]It's all this guy's fault. Clearly, no one else is to blame for this. Whenever we sent Lexington Police Department out to speak to him, and he refused to do that, I mean, what kind of person does that? What kind of person just uh says he don't care.

[00:03:39]>> What kind of person arrests somebody for protected speech? A tyrant, that's who.

[00:03:43]So, don't you dare lecture us on what kind of person does this. This guy's priorities and mindset are all messed up. This guy should not be in law enforcement. He doesn't care about individual rights or individual liberty or the Constitution. What a joke. Well, um in TCA's eyes [clears throat] and our state legislatures that's put this law forth that come out July 1st, 2024, says otherwise. Really? Is that what the law here is actually saying or what the state legislature has said? I'm going to post what I think is the law that he's talking about here. So, take a second to pause and read it and see if you agree that even under this law's definition of things that this guy somehow engaged in a legal conduct.

[00:04:27]Maybe there's a different law that he's citing here. I don't know. But even if the Tennessee law somehow criminalized this guy's conduct, that doesn't make it legal or legitimate because the Supreme Court has said otherwise. So, I really don't care what the law says in Tennessee or what the legislature thinks or what the district attorney thinks or what the cops think. I'm really questioning whether this sheriff has actually read the law in Tennessee or whether he's actually read Supreme Court precedent on free speech. It seems doubtful that he has and I don't think that he cares. Yet, he's enforcing this stuff or at the very least he's overseeing people who are enforcing this. Guys, be careful. If you make a meme about this sheriff, maybe you'll get arrested. Or maybe I'll get arrested now cuz I made a meme about this sheriff and I'm inciting other people to make memes about this sheriff and it's all a true threat.

[00:05:08]>> Yeah, Sheriff Wayne tells me that his office did talk to DA Hans Windeman's office and they signed off on the arrest as did a judicial commissioner. Well, looks like all the tyrants work together on this one from the DA's office to the cops. What a disgusting joke. This guy shouldn't be in jail in the first place and yet he's staying there for a long time. I'm at a loss for words and I'm not discounting the severity that's underlying things here about actual potential threats and actions regarding harm at schools. But this has nothing to do with that. This is clearly a meme and liberty and free speech are so important. And free speech is one of the most fundamental and important rights that we have. Well, I guess according to the sheriff, we don't actually have that right. But, I think people overlook why free speech is so important. I'll give you a few quotes from the Supreme Court that I think are relevant to the importance of free speech. But, keep in mind, these quotes are coming from a court that I think has carved out so many exceptions to the First Amendment and infringed on our free speech in unreasonable and illegitimate ways. But, in this case at least, it seems like the man's speech is clearly protected by Supreme Court precedent. Anyways, here are those quotes. "One man's vulgarity is another's lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual. If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought. Any speech worth uttering should offend, provoke, and get people to think. Otherwise, you'll just be talking about the weather all day. And speech that criticizes the government should not be weaponized by the government to arrest the speaker. That is the domain of tyranny. And here are some troubling statistics on the viewpoint of the public regarding the First Amendment and free speech. I think these numbers are from a study maybe like a year ago or so. One in three Americans say the First Amendment goes too far. Only one in four agree the right to free speech is very or completely secure.

[00:07:29]>> Yeah, there's been some very, very bad uh phone calls that my employees has had to endure.

[00:07:35]>> Oh, boo-hoo, you received some phone calls and it's upsetting to you. I like how he's playing the victim, gaslighting himself, and trying to gaslight us.

[00:07:43]You're the tyrant here arresting somebody for free speech. Also, pay attention to what's on his desk and what's behind his desk. That gives you a lot of insight to him as a person. Seems like he cares more about law enforcement itself and the thin blue line in police departments and sheriff's departments than people's individual rights. This guy should be nowhere near a badge and a gun. If you don't believe me, keep watching. And I don't care what your political ideology is, everyone should care about free speech. I'll defend the speech of anyone, those who disagree with me and those who agree with me. So, here's the update. The charge was dropped, finally, and he was released.

[00:08:18]But, this was after he spent over a month in jail and had the extreme stress of an insanely high bond and all of this looming over him. The process here is the de facto punishment. For this to even get this far is the punishment.

[00:08:32]This man was punished more for protected speech than many who commit actual crimes. And now he's filing a lawsuit. I want to see criminal charges here, too, because lawsuits are never enough and I can think of some potential crimes that were committed here, real crimes, not fake ones like free speech. The Supreme Court has created so many carve-outs to free speech that we really don't have much that is protected. But, what they have left us with isn't even protected at all because you have people like this sheriff arresting people for protected speech. Or I should say what is supposed to be protected speech because in effect, it's not protected at all.

[00:09:09]So, here's the new update. The defendants here are, surprise surprise, running for the shelter of qualified immunity. The shield of the idea that there are rules for thee, but not for me. They are claiming in part that because they relied on the DA, they should get qualified immunity. So, do you think you should get a legal protection because everyone here was incompetent? You really want to be rewarded for incompetence? The DA was incompetent, but you relied on the DA, so that makes it okay.

[00:09:36]Generally, with a qualified immunity claim, courts will look to see if there is a clearly established law that was violated, and they will also look to things like the reasonableness of the defendant. If I remember correctly, I think the circuit Tennessee is in has said that following the advice of legal counsel is not necessarily dispositive, but can be used to move a claim of qualified immunity closer to being successful. Other factors that might help with qualified immunity would be relying on a superior's orders, etc., stuff like that. But, factors like this tend to be kind of extraordinary circumstances where the courts will find qualified immunity even when the law is clearly established, but the general rule is that if the law is clearly established, there's probably not going to be qualified immunity. But, there are these other factors that can overcome that general rule. Here, I'd say that there are mountains of Supreme Court cases and other cases on free speech rights, specifically on satirical speech and political speech that is just like the speech here. In this case, the meme seems to pretty clearly be a critique of someone on the right-wing side of politics. It is criticizing perceived apathy or the attitude of get over it and applying it to the Charlie Kirk assassination. Whether you agree with the politics behind the meme doesn't matter. I don't think any reasonable person could think that this was a true threat. A reasonable person should have known that the DA acted erroneously with its advice. If the DA told you it was okay to push people off of a cliff for no reason, would you blindly follow that advice? Or would you think, "You know what? That doesn't sound right to me. I don't think that's the law."

[00:11:09]The only way you could think this meme was a true threat is by making serious mistakes with your reasoning and reading into it what you wanted to say, not what it actually does say. People should not be walking on eggshells when they post a meme because low IQ people might misinterpret it in a completely unreasonable way. There shouldn't be qualified immunity for anything, but given that we do have qualified immunity in our legal system, allowing qualified immunity for misinterpretations like this will make speech totally impotent.

[00:11:38]It will suck out all of the creativity from speech, and without creative or clever speech, there isn't any speech happening. There really isn't anything being said at all.

[00:11:47]At least not anything meaningful. So, here's perhaps the final update. There was a settlement for $835,000.

[00:11:56]Larry claims that while he was in jail, he lost his post-retirement job and missed his anniversary and missed the birth of his grandchild. Think about that. Imagine if you had to spend over a month in jail for something that was not only not illegal, but explicitly legal and protected. I don't think people realize how significant spending any amount of time in jail really is. It can totally destroy your life.

[00:12:23]Here, he seems to have suffered significantly. I'm not downplaying that, but good thing things weren't worse in terms of missing more life events and losing even more. The next person this happens to might have it even worse, and Larry already had it really bad. And I say the next person because there will be a next person.

[00:12:40]I doubt this settlement is going to change cops locally or nationally. I doubt anyone in government has learned their lesson here. And that's so damn sad. We have to change the culture. We need to persuade everyone of the importance of free speech, true free speech. That's the only real way things like this can be avoided moving forward.

[00:13:00]We need to change the mindset undergirding all of this.

[00:13:04]Also, you can't fix stupid. So, if the people involved in this actually believed this was a true threat, there's not too much you can do about that, but convincing them that free speech is even more important than they may or may not already believe might make them think a little harder next time and move with a bit more prudence.