The mayor of West Yellowstone resigned Wednesday after posting social media comments criticizing President Trump, which he later said he regretted.
“I owe the town an apology,” former Mayor Jeff McBirnie wrote in his resignation announcement Wednesday on the private West Yellowstone Public Voice Facebook group, according to a screenshot viewed by Montana Free Press. “What I posted was mean and divisive. I have clearly fallen off the tracks.”
McBirnie had been the mayor of the municipality, which has about 1,200 residents, adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, since January. The resignation followed a story in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, reporting that the mayor had posted a Facebook message that read, “I’m ANTIFA. F Trump and his Nazi followers,” over the weekend. The article noted that he had made similar posts in the past, including a Sept. 10 post, “why do Republicans like protecting a pedophile? Oh that’s right the orange mango is their true God.”
Tuesday night, following a community uproar about the recent posts, the West Yellowstone town council dedicated a portion of its meeting to discussing the comments. The mayor, one of the five voting members, did not attend the meeting. (McBirnie did not respond to requests for comments from MTFP.)
In response to questions from the Chronicle about his Facebook post, McBirnie said, “It was my way of attending the No Kings protest last Saturday, which I couldn’t attend. I have a First Amendment right to peaceful protest.”
A group protested against President Donald Trump in West Yellowstone on Saturday, one of approximately two dozen in Montana and 2,600 nationwide.
President Donald Trump received 443 votes in Gallatin County’s southern precinct, where West Yellowstone is the largest municipality, according to data from the Montana Secretary of State. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris received 419 votes.
Some residents, such as Mitch Albin, advocated for the mayor to be held accountable.
“My question is: How do we move forward to make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future? And is there anything that we can do to make sure that he is held accountable for his actions and what he said in this community?” Albin said during the meeting, which was recorded.
Other residents, like Thomas Cannon, promoted social clemency.
“I’m not here to call for any kind of consequences on anybody; that’s not my lane. I’m just here to hopefully speak reason — that we’re all neighbors, we all gotta live together, we all gotta get along,” Cannon said.
McBirnie resigned the next day.
In a Wednesday interview with MTFP, Deputy Mayor Travis Watt said the incident “puts a little cloud over everything” and “gets everyone riled up in town.” Watt said that McBirnie had a legal right to make the comment but that elected officials should anticipate public scrutiny.
“Because you’re an elected official — right or wrong — you are held to a little bit of a different standard and definitely a different expectation,” Watt said. “And so sometimes, you limit your free speech to not be divisive.”
Albin, who had pushed for accountability during the Tuesday meeting, posted a Facebook message Wednesday to thank McBirnie for his service.
“In today’s world we must remind ourselves that we are neighbors and we live in this town as one,” Albin said in the statement that wished McBirnie well.
The mayor is elected by the town council and serves as one of its five voting members. The council will hold a special election to pick a new mayor at its Nov. 4 meeting to finish out the end of McBirnie’s one-year term, according to Watt.
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