One finger salute: Stunning fate of woman who was fired over viral photo
The woman who was fired after a photo of her giving the middle finger to Donald Trump’s motorcade went viral has stunned America.
A remarkable twist in the fate of a woman who was fired after a photo of her giving the middle finger to Donald Trump’s motorcade went viral has stunned Americans.
On Tuesday, Juli Briskman, 52, won a seat on the Loudoun county board of supervisors in Virginia - beating the Republican incumbent - in US state elections that saw Mr Trump’s Republican party suffer a series of stinging defeats.
Ms Briskman gained global attention when she was snapped giving a one-finger salute as she cycled beside the president’s motorcade as it left his Virginia golf course in 2017.
The image went viral and resulted in the mother-of-two being fired from her job with a government contractor. But it ultimately sparked her ambitions to enter politics and opened “a lot of doors”, according to the Democrat.
“The last two years have been quite a ride. Now we’re helping to flip Loudoun blue,” Ms Briskman told The Washington Post, saying she was “feeling fantastic” and “surreal” after the win.
Ironically, her district includes the president’s golf course outside of which her viral moment took place. “Isn’t that sweet justice?” she asked the newspaper.
She also celebrated her win on Twitter Wednesday morning. “So proud that we were able to #FlipLoudpun #FlipVA #LOCO219,” she wrote, linking to her controversial picture.
“Thank you Loudoun!”
Ms Briskman previously told CNN how she was “really frustrated” the day she flipped off the commander in chief, saying, “The only thing I had at my disposal that day was my finger.”
Looking forward to representing my friends & neighbors in #Algonkian District who backed me up today! So proud that we were able to #FlipLoudpun #FlipVA #LOCO219 Thank you Loudoun! https://t.co/vRcDUih1AP
— Juli Briskman (@julibriskman) November 6, 2019
She filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit, which was dismissed, but she successfully sued for severance.
“It was just sort of like, here I am on my bike. I’ve got nothing, right?” Briskman told the Guardian in November 2017. “This is pretty much the only thing I had to express my opinion. He wasn’t going to hear me through bulletproof glass … So that was pretty much how I could say what I wanted to say, right?”
But Ms Briskman will now have a much broader platform in which to express herself.
With 52 per cent of the vote after 99 per cent of precincts had reported, the result saw Republican Suzanne Volpe beaten into second place.
When fighting her campaign in Loudoun County — the wealthiest in the US — Ms Briskman didn’t bring up the image that sparked her 15 minutes of fame unless homeowners started “talking about the administration” or commented on her bicycle pin.
Instead, the ultra-marathon runner told AFP she wanted to show that there was “substance” behind her candidacy — education, women’s rights, transportation and environmental issues — and that she wasn’t “just the person that rode my bike one day and flipped off the president.”
Virginia, which borders Washington DC, has traditionally been conservative – choosing Republican candidates in every presidential election from 1968 to 2004, according to the Washington Post.
Overnight, Virginia’s Democrat governor, Ralph Northam, declared: “I’m here to officially declare today, November 5, 2019, that Virginia is officially blue.”
Ms Briskman’s success comes as Mr Trump’s party also lost control of both chambers of the legislature in increasingly blue Virginia, US media including The New York Times projected.
Democrats will now hold all major statewide offices and rule the state assembly, a comprehensive consolidation of power not seen in the state since the 1990s.
– With AFP
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