About

Cyclist Flipping Off Donald Trump's Motorcade is a viral photograph of a woman on a bicycle extending her middle finger toward President Donald Trump's motorcade. The popularity of the photograph resulted in the woman being fired from her job.

Origin

On October 28th, 2017, Getty^[1] photographer Brendan Smialowski posted a photograph of a woman on a bicycle raising her middle finger toward a President Trump's motorcade leaving the Trump National Golf Course. The photograph (shown below) was captioned "A woman on a bike gestures with her middle finger as a motorcade with US President Donald Trump departs Trump National Golf Course October 28, 2017 in Sterling, Virginia."

Spread

Shortly after the picture was posted to Getty, the photograph began appearing on numerous media outlets, including Newsweek,^[2] The Guardian,^[3] The Washington Post^[4] and more.

On Twitter, people began commending the cyclist under the hashtag "#Her2020" and "SHEro." That day, "Twitter"/memes/sites/twitter ^[5] user @kylegriffin1 tweeted, "Pool: Motorcade 'overtook a female cyclist… who responded by giving the middle finger… cyclist caught up, still offering the finger.'" The post (shown below) received more than 6,200 retweets and 23,000 likes in less than a week.

On October 28th, Redditor ^[6] pmay519 posted the photo in the /r/politics subreddit, where it received more than 3,600 points (94% upvoted) in eight days. In addition, discussions about the picture appeared in /r/EnoughTrumpSpa,^[7] /r/AutoNewsPaper,^[8] /r/esist^[9] and more.

Firing

About a week later, on November 6th, HuffPost^[10] reported that the woman in the picture had lost her job over the photograph. The publication identified her as Juli Briskman, who was fired from the government contractor Akima LLC. According to the interview, she informed her employerer the picture had gone viral. They informed her in a meeting that she violated the company's social media policy by using the photo as her profile picture on Twitter and "Facebook"/memes/sites/facebook.

Claiming that she made the gesture due to her anger toward the president, she said, "He was passing by and my blood just started to boil. I’m thinking, DACA recipients are getting kicked out. He pulled ads for open enrollment in Obamacare. Only one-third of Puerto Rico has power. I’m thinking, he’s at the damn golf course again[…] I flipped off the motorcade a number of times."

When speaking to the Washington Post,^[11] she was asked if she regreted it. She replied, "I’d do it again."

That day, Twitter^[12] published a Moments page regarding the reaction to the firing.

Search Interest

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External References