On the national day of reflection for Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, an African-American Republican candidate for Florida House District 68 took to Twitter to demand that the president be hanged for war crimes, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
"I'm past impeachment," Joshua Black wrote on Twitter. "It's time to arrest and hang him high."
Black, 31, used to be a street preacher in St. Louis, Mo., before he moved to Florida in 2007. According to his campaign website, Black found politics around 2012 when he tried influencing the presidential primary, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
"You aren't seriously calling for the killing of Obama are you?" Chris Latvala, a Republican candidate for House District 67, asked Black on Twitter. "I know you are crazy but good heavens. U R an embarrassment."
Hours after the tweet, Black was standing firm on his statement, and he doubled down on his social media message, defending his comment on both Twitter and Facebook. "He should be executed for treason," Black said. "I think the appropriate punishment is death. They killed Benedict Arnold. [Obama] shouldn't be allowed to kill Americans without a trial," he wrote on Twitter.
On Facebook, Black argued that the president had been responsible for several drone attacks that killed innocent people. "This would be exactly what the President has done to others, and, as Jesus said, 'the measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you again,' " he wrote on his Facebook wall. "I make no apologies for saying that the President is not above the People. If ordinary Americans should be executed for treason, so should he."
Democratic state Rep. Dwight Dudley, Black's opponent in the House race, told the Tampa Bay Times that while Black has the right to disagree with Obama's decisions, he shouldn't call for Obama's execution. "It's dangerous and unbecoming for someone who wants to lead to call for such violence and extremist action," he said. "Wow. I'm stunned."
Read more at Tampa Bay Times.