The Missouri Department of Transportation’s Northeast District (MoDOT) issued an apology after they posted an image of an Illinois boy on social media with his “Trump 2020” shirt and hat edited out of the photo.
Mitchel Lemons won the opportunity to push a detonator to implode an old bridge after he bought a raffle ticket to benefit local EMS. On Oct. 18 he wore his Trump gear to celebrate this once in a lifetime opportunity.
The transportation department took a photo of him holding the detonator but when they published the picture to their social media, they cropped out his t-shirt and partially covered his Trump hat only revealing the numbers “2020.” They claim they did it because they didn’t want to appear to support a particular candidate.
Mitchel’s father, Steve Lemons, told KSDK-TV that his son was “kind of upset” about the edit.
"It was his decision," he said. "[Mitchel] wanted to wear the hat with the shirt. They should have left him alone. It's his freedom of speech or whatever you want to call it."
The backlash from the edited photo reached MoDOT and they apologized for their “error.”
"Our response to feedback from the original post questioning whether MoDOT was campaigning led to an error in judgment in editing the photo,” they said in a statement to KSDK-TV. “We recognized and apologized for the error and reposted the original photo and Facebook post.”
As KMOV-TV reported:
In response to a comment, MoDOT wrote, "We respect all individuals’ choice and edited the picture because many of the comments were detracting from the intent of the post which is to celebrate this young man’s excitement to have an opportunity of a lifetime."