Josselyn Berry, the press secretary for Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ), has reportedly resigned after she sent a tweet focusing on pointing guns at “transphobes,” and the governor faced calls to fire her.
Reporters Dennis Welch and Peter Valencia of Arizona’s Family Stations first reported Berry’s resignation Wednesday.
Berry’s tweet – which Welch and Valencia noted Twitter removed – came hours after a shooter, identified as a transgender biological woman, murdered three children and three adults at a Tennessee Christian school on Monday. Local police say the now-dead killer, Audrey Hale, 28, had authored a manifesto, though it has not been released.
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Berry, whose account is now private, shared a gif from the 1980 film Gloria that depicted a woman wielding dual pistols, as Breitbart News reported. Accompanying the gif, she wrote, “Us when we see transphobes.”
The Arizona Freedom Caucus called for Berry to “be fired immediately,” adding that she made the post “[l]ess than 12 hours after the tragic shooting in Nashville by a deranged transgender activist.”
“Calling for violence like this is un-American & never acceptable,” the Arizona Freedom Caucus added.
Political commentator and comedian Tim Young argued that Hobbs must fire Berry “for encouraging gun violence after the Christian school shooting.” Otherwise, “she endorses the act… there’s no in between,” he added.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said that Hobbs must fire Berry “immediately” and that no other course of action “will be acceptable.” In another tweet, he added that “any Republican would be fired for this in an instant” and that he is “done with the double standard.”
Arizona Republican Kari Lake, who was Hobbs’s opponent in last year’s gubernatorial race, concurred with Walsh that a Republican or conservative “would be personally & professionally destroyed” if he or she “made light of a mass shooting & called for more violence.” However, Lake broke with the Freedom Caucus and Walsh in calling for her termination, saying conservatives do not embrace cancel culture.
“We don’t partake in cancel culture — but the media’s bias has never been clearer,” she added.