When you have a political disagreement with your neighbor, you have one of two options: Ignore it like a normal person and let people live their lives, or do what one Missouri MAGA fan did and steal their political signs.
Springfield, Missouri resident Laura McCaskill and her partner John were fed up with their Harris-Walz signs being stolen from their yard, which they'd caught on their Ring doorbell camera.
But the footage wasn't quite clear enough to crack the case, so after four consecutive incidents, they moved on to another method.
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McCaskill attached an Apple AirTag to the sign to catch the culprit. And before long, she and John had their man. But the interaction they had with the thief—and especially what they found in his car—was anything but what they expected.
After tracking the AirTag they initially ended up at a Springfield restaurant, and then to a home in Nixa, about 12 miles south of Springfield, with a car in the driveway they recognized. So they went up and rang the doorbell, where a woman finally answered the door. McCaskill told local news outlet OzarksFirst:
“She finally came up and we said hello, and we said we think that you have something in that car that was taken from our neighborhood."
"She said, that was her son’s car and she said, ‘Well, he’s just an idiot’ and then she goes back in and we thought that was interesting.”
Interesting indeed. Soon her son came to the door and they asked him to open the trunk of his vehicle, which is where the AirTag was pinging.
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Inside was McCaskill's sign—and 58 others. She told OzarksFirst:
"I expected to find the air tag, but not 59 signs. It was kind of like finding a dead body. It was like are you kidding me?"
"Most people, they take them and they throw them in a dumpster or they throw them in someone else’s yard. It was like there was a bounty on [the signs]."
But what happened next truly says it all. After her son was caught red-handed, his mom gathered up the signs, shoved them at McCaskill and her partner and said:
"Here you go liberals."
She went on to protest that the entire situation was "so stupid" and told them to "just go vote," whatever that's supposed to mean. But McCaskill and her partner quickly informed her that since each of the signs costs a $20 donation, totaling well over $1000, his stunt was a full-on crime.
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But the young man shot back that you can find the signs on Etsy for "three or four dollars," a detail about the story that struck McCaskill as kind of disturbing—the young man had clearly taken the time to figure out how many signs he could steal without being charged with a crime.
“I was like, who would look that up?... This is disturbing because he actually had a thought process of what that limit was.”
He went on to admit that he did it because he'd seen it on TikTok, and McCaskill decided that was the best place to post the interaction to "call out" his behavior.
On social media, many were just as mystified by the kid's stunt, and especially his mom's reaction, as McCaskill was.
A county prosecutor confirmed to OzarksFirst that stealing yard signs is in fact a "class four election offense" in Missouri and is punishable by a fine of up to $2500 and/or up to a year in jail.
For McCaskill, it was the young man's mom's reaction that seemed to bother her most. She said:
“If my son stole Trump signs...I would be horrified if he did that."
"I would say, this is really wrong and you need to return their signs. It’s respecting your neighbors, respecting their First Amendment rights.”
Seems the MAGA contingent and the party of "law and order" holds themselves to a different standard.
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