OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
3:33 PM – Saturday, September 20, 2025
A sheriff’s office in Ohio has opened a criminal investigation and notified the Secret Service after anti-President Donald Trump buttons appeared at a county fair.
On Thursday, the Ashland County Fair board received complaints about buttons that seemed overtly threatening toward the president.
The Democrat Party distributed buttons with graphics of red baseball caps, reminiscent of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats, alongside Harris-Walz 2024 campaign buttons.
One button’s hat said, “FELON,” and below read, “IS HE DEAD YET?”
Another button had a hat that said, “FASCISM,” and below read, “One day, we will wake up to his obituary.”
Ashland County Sheriff Kurt Schneider confirmed that the situation is under criminal investigation.
“Violence shouldn’t be tolerated in any way, in any venue, in any jurisdiction in the United States, and it certainly won’t be tolerated here in Ashland County,” he stated in an interview with a Cleveland television station.
The sheriff referred the incident to the Secret Service for further investigation.
The board apologized to fairgoers who encountered the display.
“We are a family-friendly fair and do not condone this type of content from any vendor or merchant,” the board emphasized.
The board also ordered the Democrat Party booth to be shut down, and will not allow it to participate in the remainder of the last week of the fair.
On Friday evening, the party Democrats released a statement regarding the fiasco.
“Three Republican members of the Ashland County fair board, backed by two Republican County sheriff deputies, ordered the Ashland County Democratic Party to leave the county fair and shut down their booth because they disapproved of Ashland Democrats criticizing the Republican administration,” the statement read. “Both county parties have had booths at the county fair each year for over five decades. This is the first time county officials have ever ejected anyone from the fair for strictly political reasons.”
The statement went on, calling the incident “part of a dangerous pattern” and an “abuse of power.”
“The use of law enforcement to suppress political speech at the local level represents a grave threat to our democracy,” the statement claimed.
“We hear those in our own party and those in opposition who feel those buttons were in poor taste. In retrospect, given the emotions running high in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination and subsequent scrutiny of criticism by the government, we should have thought about this more,” the Ashland Democrat party added.
The statement concluded, “We do not and will never endorse political violence.”
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