Woman Fired For Giving Trump Middle Finger In Photo

A woman who used a photograph of herself flipping off President Donald Trump’s motorcade on social media was fired from her job for the image.

Juli Briskman told HuffPost Monday that the photo, snapped last month by a photojournalist covering the president, cost her a marketing and communications job at Akima LLC. The photo depicting Briskman on a bike giving the president the finger began circulating online and Briskman used it as her profile picture on Facebook and Twitter. Then her company, who bids on government contracts, told her she was fired Tuesday.

“They said, ‘We’re separating from you,’” Briskman told HuffPost. “Basically, you cannot have ‘lewd’ or ‘obscene’ things in your social media. So they were calling flipping him off ‘obscene.’”

Briskman said that Akima told her that the photo could affect their business. She was in her role for six months before being let go and said that nowhere on her social media did she mention who she worked for.

Akima is based in Virginia which is an at-will employment state. Employers there can fire people for any reason.

Briskman said what upset her most was that a male colleague who used foul political language on Facebook where it was prominently displayed that he worked at Akima got to keep his job. The colleague allegedly called someone “a f—ing Libtard a—hole” online and was only reprimanded, she said.

“How is that any less ‘obscene’ than me flipping off the president?” Briskman asked. “How is that fair?”

Despite losing her job, Briskman wasn’t too broken up about the firing.

“In some ways, I’m doing better than ever,” she HuffPost. “I’m angry about where our country is right now. I am appalled. This was an opportunity for me to say something.”

Akima did not immediately respond to a request from International Business Times for comment.