The Absurd Prosecution of a Man Who Posted a Charlie Kirk Meme
Larry Bushart Jr. posted trolling memes on a Facebook thread about a vigil for Kirk. He’s been in a Tennessee jail ever since.Liliana Segura
October 23 2025, 1:19 p.m.
By the time the cops showed up to arrest him for sharing a derisive meme responding to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Larry Bushart Jr. had posted on Facebook more than 100 times on Sunday alone.
It was past 11 p.m. on September 21, and Bushart, 61, was still up with his wife at their home in Lexington, Tennessee, a small city halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It had been a normal weekend. On Saturday, they went to see a community theater performance of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The next day, they moved furniture to prepare for a new carpet delivery. And, as he did almost every day, Bushart spent hours on his phone, posting on Facebook a torrent of liberal memes.
Born and raised in West Tennessee, Bushart worked as a police officer and sheriff’s deputy for 24 years, then spent another nine with the Tennessee Department of Correction before retiring from law enforcement last year. His politics made him an outlier among his neighbors. Like many people, he reserved his most strident opinions for the internet. On Facebook, Bushart slammed President Donald Trump and his followers, whom he likened to a cult. He quarreled with vaccine skeptics and fought with election deniers. As things took a darker turn during Trump’s second term, Bushart posted memes decrying the president’s increasingly authoritarian moves. After Kirk’s killing on September 10, Bushart posted furiously, repeatedly, about why the right-wing activist did not deserve to be lionized — and warning about the escalating assault on free speech.
His posts were not limited to his own feed. That Saturday morning, in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County,” Bushart spotted a thread about an upcoming candlelight vigil honoring Kirk in the county seat of Linden, a small town some 45 minutes away. He fired off a rapid series of trollish memes. One showed a scene from “The Sopranos.” “Tony, Charlie Kirk died,” Carmela Soprano says. “Who gives a shit,” Tony replies. Another quoted Kash Patel’s press conference after Kirk’s murder, where he said, “I’ll see you at Valhalla,” depicting the FBI director in a Viking costume and holding a rubber chicken. The most vulgar meme appeared to capture the moment Kirk was shot, accompanied by the words, “Release the Epstein Files.”
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/23/charlie-kirk-meme-arrest-tennessee-larry-bushart/
Absurd doesn't even begin to cover it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
That is also not in the OP blurb, so I was just curious if we know. TIA 
Unbelievably infuriating. Hope he sues the shit out of the county (and wins of course). This cannot be allowed to stand.
Trump's words being quoted there are the ones much more logically interpreted as promoting school violence 
However getting down to that point apparently takes more than a few paragraphs, which most people do not read past. When you read the beginning alone, it reads like they're castigating him via their words choices.
Unless you're Borowitz or the Onion or the like, I would advise any article author against this particular sort of what I might call "comedic formatting". The average reader is not that smart, nor patient enough to get down to the "real point".
MHO, fwiw 
