This page has been disputed. See footnotes. -bb
Retired Air Force Master Sgt. George Roof posted a “Presidents I’ve Known” rant on his personal Facebook page on November 20 2016, and it has since been widely shared and circulated.
George Roof opens the commentary by identifying himself as a “military lifer” and critiquing President Lyndon B. Johnson’s time in office. Roof states that LBJ “micromanaged” military leaders during the Vietnam War, adding that President Richard Nixon was “hawkish” but gave military leadership more independence.
While detailing the political landscape throughout the later half of the 70s and 80s, Roof reports that “liberals were becoming socialists” and draft-dodgers who were “pardoned” by President Jimmy Carter were “turning out college graduates with degrees in socialism.” Then, George Roof goes on to call President Obama a “Manchurian candidate” with a “faked” birth certificate (a thoroughly debunked claim) and summarizes his disapproval of Obama’s time in office.
From there, George Roof turns his attention to the 2016 election, and Middle America’s support at that time for Donald Trump:
Middle America had had enough and though the pollsters and the pipers tried to convince them not even to bother to vote, they were fed up with the denizens of the swamp. It was time. Florida was designated a “swing” state ignoring that all those old retirees living in St. Petersburg and the fed up Cuban Americans of Miami weren’t interested in their platform. Ohio and Pennsylvania, where coal production was blacklisted and where Obama had ridiculed them for “clinging to their Bibles and their guns” lay awaiting this supposed “landslide” Hillary vote and creamed it.
George Roof concludes the post by urging Democratic Party voters that “you had your big hurrah and now your party is over” before turning his attention to Republicans:
For you staunch Republicans, don’t gloat so much yourselves. You’ve been put on notice by the American people that we’re fed up with ALL YOU BASTARDS and if you don’t start putting America first, you do so at your own peril. You might want to buy a copy of George McGovern’s autobiography and see how shocking and humbling it can be for a professional politician to have to try to find legitimate work once he falls from grace. This election was pure, unadultered AMERICAN. Hillary got beaten and AMERICA WON THE ELECTION.You can claim he’s not “your President” all you want, but unless you forfeit your American citizenship, YES HE IS!!!! Go cry a river someplace they need water.
Roof’s social media accounts link to the the website of a taxidermy business he runs in Magnolia, Delaware, that confirms biographical information about Roof that’s been added to different versions of his “President’s I’ve Known” commentary. Primarily, it confirms that he spent 30 years in the Air Force before turning his attention to taxidermy in retirement:
The love of recreating these gorgeous creatures followed me and though I enlisted in the Air Force, I was always able to find some creature to work with. I did that for almost 30 years of nomadic military life. About 5 years before my retirement, I decided to transition into full time taxidermy and began to work in earnest.
We can can confirm the authorship of George Roof’s “Presidents I’ve Known” commentary. How much of it is actually true and how much of it has held up since, however, is another discussion entirely.
1/31/2019, 10:13am: Updated and reformatted. The original version can be found archived here. –bb
7/21/2019, 9:46am: There have been some recent emails disputing this page, which was published before we took over the site. We will be investigating and will update if we find more information. Meanwhile, we have changed our truth rating from “True” to “Unknown.” -bb