Robert Foster ran a failed gubernatorial campaign in 2019. (Facebook/ Robert Foster)
A Republican politician and former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives has called for trans people to be executed by firing squad.
Robert Foster served in the state’s House of Representatives from 2016 to 2020, and in 2019 embarked on a failed campaign to become governor of Mississippi.
During his time as a representative, Foster authored Mississippi’s death penalty legislation, which allows for executions by gas chamber, electrocution and firing squad.
On Thursday, 24 March, Foster tweeted: “Some of y’all still want to try and find political compromise with those that want to groom our school aged children and pretend men are women, etc.
“I think they need to be lined up against [a] wall before a firing squad to be sent to an early judgment.”
This account, belonging to a former Republican state rep in Mississippi, is still active and this unapologetic call for murder is still live and @twittersecurity has done nothing about it. pic.twitter.com/5aMjj1zqzr
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) March 25, 2022
While his tweet was taken down by the social media platform, his account remains active and he continued to spew transphobic bile.
Foster, who now runs a farm in DeSoto County, Mississippi, wrote in a subsequent tweet: “Transgendered people are merely victims, it’s their pedo groomers that are consumed by evil.”
These adult groomers trying to convince children to “transition” are committing pure evil. Yet we do nothing about it as a society.
Good men cower in fear of being called out publicly by Commie Liberals. Enough is enough. It’s evil, they need to be stopped & held accountable.
— Robert Foster (@RobertFoster4MS) March 29, 2022
On Tuesday, 29 March, he added: “These adult groomers trying to convince children to ‘transition’ are committing pure evil. Yet we do nothing about it as a society.
“Good men cower in fear of being called out publicly by Commie Liberals. Enough is enough. It’s evil, they need to be stopped and held accountable.”
Referencing Florida’s hateful ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, he added: “The Mississippi legislature needs to ban grooming in schools just like Florida did. It’s not all that needs to be done but it’s a good start.”
When trans rights activist Parker Molloy sent the anti-LGBT+, anti-abortion Republican screenshots of the dictionary definition of a woman, which included “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male”, he told her: “You are insane. You need to be in a straight jacket [sic] in a padded room in a mental hospital.”
During his 2019 gubernatorial campaign, Foster made headlines across the US when he refused to allow female political reporter Larrison Campbell to ride along on his campaign bus with male journalists, unless she was accompanied by a man.
Foster later defended himself, saying he lived by the “Billy Graham Rule” and that he had vowed to never be alone with a woman he was not married to, just in case he was accused of having an affair.
He insisted that he was “respecting his wife”, but Campbell said: “What you’re saying here is that a woman is a sexual object first and a reporter second.”