Vet Arrested After Burning a Flag at the White House to Protest Trump's Order (for 'igniting an object') [View all]

[Jack Valentino]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/veteran-jay-carey-arrested-after-burning-a-flag-at-the-white-house-to-protest-donald-trumps-order/


The Army veteran railed against Trump’s order prohibiting the desecration of flags, slamming the commander-in-chief as an “illegal fascist president.”

Ewan Palmer
Reporter
Updated Aug. 26 2025 10:56AM EDT
Published Aug. 26 2025 10:54AM EDT


An Army veteran has been arrested after burning an American flag outside the White House in defiance of Donald Trump’s new executive order targeting the act, long seen as a symbol of free speech and expression.

The man, identified as Jay Carey, doused an American flag with accelerant Monday before setting it on fire and railing against what he claimed was Trump’s “illegal” order prohibiting the desecration of flags.

“No president can make a law period. No Congress shall make a law infringing on First Amendment rights,” said Carey, who described himself as a 20-year combat veteran of the U.S. Army. “I’m burning this flag as a protest to that illegal fascist president that sits in that house. We burn this flag in protest to that president who feels that it’s his right to do whatever he wants, make whatever law he wants, regardless if it’s legal or illegal.”

Video posted on Instagram shows Secret Service agents dousing the blaze with a fire extinguisher and detaining Carey, although not for burning the flag. Instead, he was arrested for violating a law that prohibits setting fires in federal parks.


Read all:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/veteran-jay-carey-arrested-after-burning-a-flag-at-the-white-house-to-protest-donald-trumps-order/


Sounds like a fair arrest, rather than a fascist action---
acts of civil disobedience can have a cost
(although what he was protesting wasn't what he was arrested for, since the Supreme Court already ruled many years ago
that burning the flag as political speech cannot be outlawed..., regardless of Trump's E.O. blathering...

Unfortunately setting fires in federal parks is actually illegal, it seems

I APPLAUD this vet's protest, I hope someone sets up a 'GoFundMe' to cover his legal expenses and a little more!


(Trump's worthless EO brings back memories of an argument with my now EX-wife about that 1989 Supreme Court decision which ruled that flag-burning was a protected form of political speech.... She was against it, I was for it. She tried to be a good Democrat while she was married to me--- but long after the divorce in the era of Obama, I happened to find her facebook page which had shared a bunch of racist anti-Obama crap, which made me appalled that we had ever shared a bed Seems that after we parted, she went back to her father's bad influence, one of his favorite words began with an 'N'.... Now I'm sure she's a total magat, but I don't care to go look)