Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill had a insult-filled exchange through Facebook with a Huntsville man on Saturday, a back-and-forth Merrill ended by telling the man to consider a sex change operation.
Michael Richard, 51, started the exchange Friday night with a message to Merrill: “You’re an embarrassment to the state.”
Richard said he was referring to Merrill’s retweet that referred to “Black Lives Matter’s war on whites” and a second retweet that said “when patriots decide it’s time to fight back it’s gonna be ugly.” The retweets have drawn criticism, including a letter from a coalition of social justice groups saying they were racially insensitive and could promote violence.
“It just reeks of more bigotry in this state that’s been going on for years. It’s just more of the same,” Richard told AL.com on Saturday when asked why he called Merrill “an embarrassment.”
Merrill fired back at Richard’s “embarrassment” message by telling Rich: “You are a racist liberal.” Merrill said he does not know Richard.
Saturday night, Merrill said he should have just deleted Richard’s message or ignored it.
“The frustration that I feel from so many different people trying to put their stamp on statements that I’ve made or things that I’ve been a part of, it’s extraordinarily frustrating,” Merrill said. “Whenever I received that message, I should have just deleted it or moved on. I didn’t do that and I engaged in an exchange with him that was not productive.”
Asked if he regretted the exchange, Merrill said, “If I had it to do over again, I would certainly have done it a different way. Because like I said, that’s not productive.”
Richard acknowledged that he was “trolling” Merrill, or trying to rile him to see what reaction he would get. Richard sent screen shots of the messages to AL.com.
Richard asked Merrill ”What’s it like to watch your career and credibility dissolve in real time? .... Oh, and don’t forget. You work for me.”
“What’s it like to never have a career?” Merrill wrote back.
Richard responded: “Awww. Are you feeling a wee bit butthurt about that? You. Work. For. Me.”
Merrill: “I work for all 4.8 million Alabamians.”
Richard: “So then, yes, you work for me. Now step and fetch.”
After a couple of more similar exchanges, Merrill ended the conversation by telling Richard,
“You may also consider having a sex change operation so you can become what you were intended to be. You’re done here.”
Richard said Merrill then blocked him from further responses.
“I think that’s pretty obvious I was trolling him pretty hard,” Richard said when asked if he was taunting Merrill, who is a conservative Republican. “I think I was just trying to see what he would say at this point. Because apparently, a lot of people have been getting similar reactions from him.
“He’s making things really personal when he’s supposed to be representing all of us. Apparently, he only represents the people who vote red.”
As for the comment about a sex-change operation, Richard said, “I’ve got family who are LGBTQ. So, I’m in full support of that support of that. People can do whatever they want. And his inability to recognize people having these personal freedoms is just beyond me.”
Richard said he shared the exchange on Twitter and with friends. “They’re just incredulous at this point that an elected official would make this such a personal thing against liberals.”
Merrill has previously drawn criticism for blocking people from his personal social media accounts and exchanging harsh messages with those who insult him or criticize his positions. He has distinguished his personal accounts from his state office’s social media accounts and said he won’t allow his personal accounts to be a platform for people to promote liberal positions that he opposes.
Asked what he meant by the sex-change comment to Richard, Merrill said most of his attacks on social media in recent days have come from women.
“If you look at the people that have been jumping on me, about 90% of them have been women,” Merrill said. “And most of them are liberal activists that have racist tendencies toward white men. But the things that they post and things that they are doing, I just felt like that was more in line with what I had been seeing because I’ve had so few men that have reached out to me.”
Asked how the sex-change suggestion was appropriate, Merrill said, “I don’t know that it’s appropriate. I just think that’s how I was feeling because that’s who’s been jumping on me, is a bunch of liberal women who obviously think it’s their job in life is to put me in my place.”
Merrill attended the Alabama-Kentucky football game in Tuscaloosa on Saturday and said he heard supportive comments from those who recognized him and spoke to him.
“I had several at the Alabama football game that stopped me and said they appreciated me taking a stand to fight back against the liberal special interests that are continuing to jump on me,” Merrill said. “But I didn’t have a single person that I came in contact with say anything that was not supportive today. And I had dozens of people say something to me.”
Merrill said he is concerned that people are increasingly afraid to speak out on issues because of what he called “the cancel culture.” He said an example is the backlash Church of the Highlands Pastor Chris Hodges faced because he “liked” social media posts by the president of Turning Point USA, a pro-Donald Trump group holding the position that “White Privilege is a myth.” Hodges later apologized and said the social media posts did not reflect his opinions.
“People jumped on him from all over the nation,” Merrill said. “And it actually helped hurt the ministry of the church. And it separated the ministry from some of the work they were doing at one of the Birmingham city schools. I just think that people are afraid to speak up, and the reason they’re afraid is because of what I’m going through now, what I’ve been going through the last four days.
“So, you asked me why I responded to the guy. I guess it’s because I’ve been getting so much of it, I just said, ‘You know I’m going to say something to him.’ So, I did.”