Trump Supporter Jokes About Plowing Into Protesters At Phoenix Rally, Loses Job

An Arizona man got fired from his job after he joked on Facebook about driving his car through anti-Trump protesters who were planning to march near downtown Phoenix to demonstrate against President's "Make America Great Again" rally on Tuesday.

Amid the discussions about the demonstration on a Facebook event page, "Protest Trump Downtown Phoenix," one particular comment, which read like a threat, grabbed many eyeballs. "You are all pathetic. Cant wait to drive through. 4x4 with push bumper will be sweet in this crowd. I named my lifted truck 'trumper,'" Cobo wrote in his comment.

The Arizona man, in his comment, made an indirect reference to the death of Heather Heyer, 32, who was killed when James Fields allegedly plowed his vehicle into a crowd of counter-protesters demonstrating against "Unite the Right" rally, organized by white supremacists, in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 12.

Within hours, the group members started sharing the screenshot of the comment. A day after Cobo made the remark, his employer —West Valley Tires Point S, an automotive-services store in Buckeye, Arizona — condemned the comment in a Facebook post, AZ Central reported. The post also mentioned that Cobo was fired with immediate effect.

While talking to AZ Central, Cobo opened up about his comment that many have called insensitive. "I'm being made into a horrible person over a joke that was just meant to ruffle some feathers," he said. "I admit it was a tasteless joke, but keyword here is it was a joke. If anybody was ever going to go and intentionally hurt people, why would they talk about it on social media publicly before doing it?"

He also stressed that he never had any intention of hurting anyone, and he had no idea why he was being defamed as a “racist” by social media users. “I never hurt anybody, nor did I have the intent to," Cobo said. "I never said I was actually going to hit anybody with a vehicle. They assumed it. Never would have thought it would be a big deal. I still can't figure out why I'm being called a racist. I've never even said anything racist.”

Cobo went on to defend himself saying he did not believe he did anything wrong in any way. "I don't care that I got fired. I already got another job," he said. "The only thing that upsets me about this situation is that adults are able to throw a tantrum and raise hell and get what they want by doing so. This is not how America is supposed to work."

Cobo is an ardent Trump supporter, which is apparent from his posts on Facebook. In one of the recent posts that he shared Thursday, he defended the president's Twitter habits. "President Trump's tweets are him as a real person. I think that's a big part of why he got elected was because he's real and he's not afraid to be real," he wrote.