State Rep. Casey Guernsey
COLUMBIA, Mo. – State Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, said Tuesday he stands with football fans who booed a reference to President Barack Obama during a swearing-in ceremony for members of the Missouri National Guard at a home football game over the weekend.
Guernsey deleted his tweet within a half hour of posting.
“I find booing a liar to be patriotic and rather enjoyed it,” Guernsey wrote on Twitter. He later removed the post.
The tweet prompted criticism from one of Guernsey’s colleagues, Rep. Caleb Jones, R-California, who called the post “unreal,” and said he disagreed “100 percent”.
According to reports, a small outbreak of booing came during an oath taking ceremony during halftime of Mizzou’s game versus Tennessee, when members were prompted to swear an oath to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
** UPDATE, Nov. 7: Guernsey, in a statement Thursday, offered an explanation for the tweet, but stopped short of apologizing for his comment.
“The tweet was meant to be directed at comments from the linked story – and that I ‘enjoyed’ (I’m referencing my comments here) the entire ceremony. I was there and didn’t agree with some of those who commented in the story,” he said. “The crowd was very exuberant in cheering for the guardsmen. Much more loudly than the boos.”
Area lawmakers, including Jones and Rep. Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, who posted, “the ‘boos’ were 100 percent inappropriate.”
State Rep. Clem Smith, D-Velda Village Hill, who said he attended Saturday’s game, said in a statement he was “embarrassed and angry at the actions of those who booed.”
“At no point did university officials reprimand the crowd members for this inappropriate and unpatriotic act,” he said. “Those crowd members disrespected the proud men and women of our nation’s great military, the President of the United States and the upstanding citizens of Missouri.”