ASHLAND — Ashland County Fair officials booted the Ashland County Democratic Party booth on Thursday following the political party’s sale of “offensive buttons” directed toward President Donald Trump.
The Ashland County Fair posted on Facebook around 8 p.m. on Thursday that it had been “made aware of offensive buttons in the Democrat booth.”
“We are a family friendly fair and do not condone this from any vendor/merchant. We apologize for those who saw the display. The democrat (sic) party has been asked to pack their booth up for this year so they not be here (for the remainder) of our fair week. This is not political, we just can’t have this at our county fair,” reads the post.
As of 11:45 p.m. the post had been shared 478 times with 967 comments on the Ashland County Fair’s Facebook page.
Heather Sample, chair of the Ashland County Democratic Party, declined to comment Thursday evening because she is waiting to speak with a lawyer.
The Ashland Fair Board did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday night.
A Facebook user took a photo of the buttons. They depict a red hat with words such as “Fascist” and “Resist.” Smaller text reads “Is he dead yet?” and “One day, we will wake up to his obituary.”
Some of them also contained “8647,” a political code interpreted by some as a call to violence against President Trump.
Ashland County Sheriff Kurt Schneider said he would contact the U.S. Secret Service on Friday to follow up, according to Fox 8 in Cleveland.
“Violence shouldn’t be tolerated in any way, in any venue in any jurisdiction in the United States and it certainly won’t be tolerated here in Ashland County,” he told Fox 8.
Political emotions have heightened in the United States over the past week in the wake of conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk‘s assassination in Utah on Sept. 10.
Since the murder, there have been mass disciplinary and retaliatory actions taken against various people for commentary or social media posts believed to celebrate, justify, or trivialize Kirk’s murder, encourage further political violence, denigrate Kirk, or tarnish his legacy.
On Sept. 17, late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s show was suspended indefinitely after his comments about the Kirk case on the Sept. 16 episode.
This story originally published Thursday evening. Read the link below for an update.
