FL High School Senior Class President Loses Position over Donald Trump ‘Joke’

A high school senior class president in Florida lost his position after he made a joke about his opponent putting in place policies that President Trump would enact.

JP Krause of Vero Beach High School joked to his classmates in a speech that, unlike his opponent, he would not “raise taxes” or “build a wall,” the Daily Mail reported.

The school’s principal, however, did not take the joke well and decided to strip him of his newly won position and give him detention.

Krause said he only meant the remarks as a joke and did not think the school would take his words seriously.

“It was completely out of left field for me,” Krause told WPTV.

Krause gave the speech in April in a student council race to become senior class president.

“They started going ‘speech, speech!’ kinda jokingly. My teacher was like ‘go right ahead,'” Krause said of the scene in the classroom before he began his speech.

In Krause’s tongue-in-cheek speech to the class, he encouraged his classmates to vote for him because his opponent would “expand the government, raise taxes 80 percent, and create a dress code.”

“Like Trump did during his campaign,” he added.

Krause won the election among his peers, but he failed to win his school principal over.

The principal said his speech was akin to “harassment” and “public humiliation” of his classmate and that he violated the school’s code of conduct.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a non-profit public interest law firm that fights for individual liberty, got word of the incident and offered to provide Krause free legal representation. The firm is now representing Krause and has appeared on Fox & Friends to tell his story.

“What JP was doing was engaged in the most basic First Amendment-protected speech, which is pure political speech,” Pacific Legal Foundation’s senior & managing attorney Mark Miller said. “What they did was violate his constitutional rights.”

Miller penned a letter to the superintendent of Krause’s school district in the hopes that Krause will be reinstated as class president.