Fresno State University said they will fully cooperate with any federal investigation after a professor posted a series of Twitter messages calling for President Trump to be hanged and for Republicans to be executed.
“To save American democracy, Trump must hang,” Professor Lars Maischak wrote on his Twitter account in February. “The sooner and the higher, the better.”
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“Has anyone started soliciting money and design drafts for a monument honoring the Trump assassin, yet?” the professor asked in an earlier tweet.
Maischak, who is a history lecturer, also went after Republicans – tweeting, “Justice = The execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant.”
So why all the hullabaloo now over a bunch of tweets written back in February? Well, the tweets apparently went unnoticed and unreported until Breitbart News broke the story over the weekend.
The Secret Service has not commented on whether or not they are investigating the comments.
The university initially launched an investigation to determine that the professor’s statements were made as a private citizen and not as a representative of the school. However, in the face of massive national outrage it appears they are going to revisit the situation.
Fresno State President Joseph Castro said the professor’s comments “warrant further review and consideration.”
“Professor Maischak’s personal views and commentary, with its inclusion of violent and threatening language, is obviously inconsistent with the core values of our University,” Castro wrote on the university’s website.
“The review of these and any other statements will be conducted in the context of rights of free expression, but also for potential direct threats of violence that may violate the law,” he added.
Fresno State will not say whether the professor has tenure or whether or not he is still in the classroom.
Maischak told television station KSEE he was “appalled that the president of the university is allowing himself to be instrumentalized for a right-wing smear campaign.”
“Specifically, the suggestion that I had made ‘potential direct threats of violence that may violate the law’ is unwarranted,” he said. “It constitutes an embrace by the university of the claims made by right-wing propaganda outlets.”
The professor is not a big fan of the “right-wing” media.
“The function of articles like the one produced by Breitbart and affiliates is to whip up a digital lynch-mob of people sending threats and insults to my email and Twitter accounts, with the ultimate goal of silencing dissenters,” he told the Fresno Bee.
He went on to say he does not condone violence even though that’s exactly what he advocated in his Twitter feed.
“From the context of the entirety of my tweets, this should be evident to anyone reading them in good faith (as opposed to malicious intent),” he said.
In other words, he’s taking the “It all depends on what the definition of hang is” defense.
To say the professor is a prolific tweeter might be an understatement. Consider these gems:
“What would you do if your country has been hijacked by a gang of crazed homicidal fanatics? You storm the cockpit #Flight93”
“Mercy towards racists was always the fatal weakness of good Americans. 1865, 1965, they left too many of them alive.”
“If only Mary had had an abortion! We would have been spared this Clerical-Fascist crap. #His Glory my ass!”
“You Fascist Trump-voting white trash scum can wallow in your filthy hell-holes of flyover states. Enjoy.”
Republican students at Fresno State have every right to be deeply concerned about their safety and well-being inside that man’s classroom.
That’s why I believe Professor Maischak should be fired – immediately.
And should Fresno State University decide to retain his services, we should call on the federal government to defund the school. There’s no good reason for our tax dollars to pay the salary of a man who wants to execute the president.
Class dismissed, professor.
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