« What I did, I would like to compare to what Jesus did… »
On Christmas Eve, I wrote about a special delivery to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s home in Los Angeles which shut down the neighborhood for a couple hours as the Secret Service and LAPD bomb squad responded. At the time the identity of the person who left the large, gift-wrapped box of manure for Sec. Mnuchin (accidentally placing it at a neighbor’s house) was unknown, but it seemed a safe bet that the person behind it was a progressive looking to express his displeasure with the Trump administration. Late Sunday night the person responsible outed himself to AL.com. His name is Robby Strong and, sure enough, he’s a progressive who calls the stunt an “act of political theater.”
L.A. psychologist Robby Strong provided AL.com with convincing evidence that he is the man behind the now-infamous incident, which attracted the LAPD’s bomb squad and other law enforcement personnel to Mnuchin’s home in the city’s Bel Air neighborhood.
He defended his decision to drop the box of manure – which he says he got from a horse-owning friend – off at Mnuchin’s house as a “prank” aimed at raising the awareness of Americans about the idea that “Republicans have done nothing for the American worker” and other political topics.
“The thing I live by is a rule of transparency and I was exercising my First Amendment rights,” Strong told AL.com. “A few years ago when [a Supreme Court ruling] said that corporations are persons and money equals free speech, that is so absurd and my rule of thumb is now that if corporations are free speech, then so is horses***t.”
The Washington Post adds that Strong has been visited by the Secret Service and is comparing himself to both Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr.:
“In the long run, if we don’t do stuff like this, what are we going to have left?” Strong told KPCC. “What I did, I would like to compare to what Jesus did when he went into the temple and overturned the tables of the money-changers, who were exploiting the people financially in the name of religion.
“I feel like that’s what the GOP has done to the American people.”…
His escapade earned him a visit from Secret Service agents Sunday, Strong said — and the agency confirmed to The Washington Post that it interviewed the manure’s self-declared sender.
But Strong wasn’t arrested, and he subsequently compared himself to another man who ended up on the wrong side of the federal government: Martin Luther King Jr.
The fact that this guy is a psychologist is really just perfect. I suspect if Mnuchin were to compare himself to Jesus and MLK, Strong would have an unflattering diagnosis to offer. In any case, this is a pretty extreme way for a professional to seek attention from fellow progressives.
Strong wrote on Facebook, “Bomb scares certainly were not my intention, but maybe they should be a little scared, eh.” Surely he must have known that a large package like this would attract attention from the police. After all, that was his whole intent, to make the news and become a hero of the resistance. What good is political theater without an audience of adoring fans?
