WH Official Apologizes for Past Tweets Comparing Police to ‘Slave Patrols’

Tyler Cherry, the newly appointed White House communications official, has apologized for some of his past tweets, which included a post that compared police to “slave patrols.”

Tyler Cherry found himself in the center of a social media firestorm over the last week when past posts resurfaced that featured him espousing extremist rhetoric. It came after he had been promoted to Associate Communications Director in the Biden administration. Per Newsweek:

The controversy erupted shortly after Politico reported Cherry’s promotion from his previous role as communications director at the Interior Department. Screenshots of tweets dating back to 2014 and 2015 began circulating online, revealing strong criticisms of law enforcement, calls for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and statements supporting anti-Israel organizations.

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In one of the purported tweets from 2015, posted during the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, Cherry allegedly wrote, “Praying for #Baltimore, but praying even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases.”

Another post from the same period reportedly stated, “Time to recall that the modern day police system is a direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs.”

Tyler Cherry, Michael Vazquez, and Jamie Citron attend a Pride Celebration hosted by the Vice President Of The United States and Mr. Emhoff in collaboration with GLAAD on June 28, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for GLAAD)

Tweets predating April 2022 were deleted from Tyler Cherry’s account, so the authenticity of the screenshots circulating could not be independently verified, but Cherry himself seemed to confirm they were real.