A small-town mayor in Texas has resigned after melting down on Facebook Tuesday, when he called for “lazy” locals to fend for themselves amid a deadly snowstorm and power outages across the state.
“Quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family,” wrote Tim Boyd, the then-mayor of Colorado City, Texas, in the city’s Facebook group.
Boyd declared in the Tuesday morning post that he was about to “hurt some feelings,” then went on to rip anyone who might need help during the snowstorm, which left millions without power and resulted in at least 21 deaths across the southern U.S.
Boyd dismissed community aid as “socialist” in his lengthy Facebook rant and hinted at survival of the fittest in his town of 4,000 people.
“Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic),” he wrote, while demonstrating his weak command of proper spelling. “Sink or swim, it’s your choice.”
Boyd also urged people to “deal without” water and to “step up and come up with a game plan” if their electricity is down.
“God has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this,” he wrote. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves.”
The state has been hammered by the cold and the snow, which crippled its largely gas-reliant power grid. Nevertheless, many in the Republican-run state falsely blamed the outages on green-energy projects such as wind turbines.
Boyd complained in a followup post that he was facing “anger and harassment” for his comments. He also doubled down with his complaints about “lazy” residents, while apologizing for the “wording and some of the phrases” he used.
“I would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone that is in true need of help to be left to fend for themselves,” he wrote.
He added that he had already decided before the post that he would not run for mayor again.
“I never meant to speak for the city of Colorado City or Mitchell County,” the mayor of Colorado City said.
“If I had it to do over again, I would have just kept my words to myself and if I did say them I would have used better wording and been more descriptive.”