The woman who gave President Donald Trump’s motorcade the finger in late October is speaking out after she said she was fired for the incident that went viral.
Juli Briskman, a former member of the marketing team at Akima LLC, was riding her bike as the presidential motorcade passed by, transporting Trump from his golf course back to the White House.
“My finger said what I was feeling,” Briskman said. “I’m angry and I’m frustrated.”
She flipped off the motorcade twice, and after the moment went viral, she told her employer.
“I thought that it would probably get back to my company eventually,” Briskman said in an interview with CNN’s Jeanne Moos.
She said she was told she had violated the company’s social media policy, and said the company in turn fired her.
“I said, ‘Well, that was me,'” Briskman told Moos, recalling her conversation with her former company’s HR representative. Akima LLC did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment, and the White House declined to comment.
Briskman said she had been at the company for about 6½ months before the incident, and was working in the marketing department.
She added that she’s “really not” the bird-flipping type.
“Health care doesn’t pass, but you try to dismantle it from the inside,” Briskman said. “Five-hundred people get shot in Las Vegas; you’re doing nothing about it. You know, white supremacists have this big march and hurt a bunch of people down in Charlottesville and you call them good people.”
This story has been updated to reflect CNN’s repeated outreach to Akima LLC.
