JULI BRISKMAN DIDN’T think twice when she gave US president Donald Trump the finger as his motorcade passed her while she was cycling on a road near his golf club.
“He was passing by and my blood just started to boil,” Briskman (50) told HuffPost.
“I’m thinking, he’s at the damn golf course again.”
But the obscene gesture quickly went viral. And it has now cost the single mother her job.
The president had gone to his Trump National Golf Club on the banks of the Potomac River, about 40 kilometres northwest of the White House.
Briskman lives nearby and was out for a Saturday bike ride when the convoy of black SUVs drove past.
The moment was captured by AFP White House photographer Brendan Smialowski.
“You never know what you might see. You never know what might happen,” he said. Gestures from bystanders, thumbs up or middle fingers, are common.
In this case, he said, Briskman “seemed to know exactly who was inside those vehicles”.
After the first time the convoy passed her, she caught up again when it stopped at a red light.
“What made this particular cyclist unique was her tenacity – once the motorcade passed her, she managed to catch back up and share her feelings again,” he said.
The photo only showed Briskman from the back, unidentifiable, her left arm out and middle finger up.
It didn’t take her long to realise that she was the person in the photo soon all over the internet and television. She proudly posted it as her profile picture on her Facebook and Twitter pages.
It isn’t known whether Trump saw the gesture. But it didn’t please Briskman’s bosses at Akima LLC, a builder that does work for the US government and military.
Three days later they told Briskman, a marketing officer, she had to go.
“They said, ‘We’re separating from you,’” Briskman told HuffPost.
“Basically, you cannot have lewd or obscene things in your social media. So they were calling flipping him off obscene.”
Briskman and Akima could not be contacted by AFP today for comment.
The photograph remained at the top of Briskman’s social media pages.
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