The mayor of a town in Missouri resigned on Monday night after making anti-semitic remarks following the Jewish community center shootings in Kansas City.
According to USA TODAY, Marionville Mayor Dan Clevenger, 59, said he was friends with former KKK member Frazier Glenn Miller, who on fatally shot three people on April 13.
After the attacks, the mayor told reporters he held some of the same beliefs about Jewish people that Miller did. Additionally, an anti-Semitic letter that Clevenger wrote around 10 years ago was discovered.
At a town meeting Monday night, residents gathered in their support to push Clevenger out of office.
"We must show our neighbors, state, our nation and a global community our true, kind, caring, loving and accepting community," resident John Horner said. "We simply cannot tolerate a public official who makes anti-Semitic comments."
Horner said the mayor's recent remarks about Jews are "almost verbatim" from a book written by Miller years ago.
"Please move to impeach the mayor and restore Marionville's reputation," Horner said.
However, there were some Clevenger supporters present, USA TODAY said, who claimed the mayor had free speech protections.
"I have seen a lot more hatred from some of you people than I have seen out of Dan Clevenger," resident Gene Smith said. "I thought we had free speech in America."
After Cleveneger's initial comments sparked outrage, the Springfield News-Leader asked him to clarify what he meant, which ended up making the situation worse.
"This country is dead," Clevenger told the newspaper. "I hate to say that. We have a fake economy, high unemployment. Fuel prices are high. We don't have no industry. All the factories have left.
"The futures market, the Federal Reserve, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health - every time I see that on the news, there are Jewish names and they run things."
Though at first he refused to resign, he told reports on Monday night that he was personally hurt to hear the backlash and decided to step down.
