In a fiery statement at a town council meeting after a town selectwoman kneeled during the Pledge of Allegiance, a Vietnam veteran implored her to resign and said that “if you don’t like your flag, I’ll help you pack your bags and get the heck out of here.”

The statement was made by Hassam, Connecticut resident Calvin Bunnell. The sleepy town, roughly between Hartford and New Haven, doesn’t get much national attention. That changed when Selectwoman Melissa Schlag decided to kneel for the pledge because she doesn’t like Donald Trump.

“I knelt out of extreme sorrow for the bullying, lies, and attack on human rights that comes from the leader of our great nation every single day,” Schlag said in a statement posted on Facebook. “I knelt because there are people who are cold, sick, and hungry in this country, while the present administration says humans are not worthy of things like universal health care and must choose every day between the medication needed to stay alive and paying their electric or grocery bill.”

In other words, she only respects the symbol of the country she serves — albeit in an extraordinarily minor way and apparently in the most self-serving, attention-grabbing manner possible — when the party she supports is in power. That didn’t sit too well with veterans like Bunnell, needless to say.

And, while the meeting at which she first knelt didn’t get all that much attention, a Monday meeting drew a significant crowd of veterans and other patriotic citizens, who booed her for her decision to take a knee.

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One of them was Bunnell.

“When you kneeled and turned your back on that flag, you turned your back on half of this town,” Bunnell said.

“As it says on my shirt, if you don’t like the flag I’ll help you pack your bags and get the heck out of here.”

In an appearance on Fox News, Bunnell explained why he said that “the flag is supposed to represent the United States” and that public officials should respect it.

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“When I first went into elementary school, that was the first thing they taught us, respect for the flag and what it stands for,” Bunnell told Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt.

“It just doesn’t stand for freedom, but it also stands for all the gentlemen, ladies in the service that have been killed in the line of duty. And when someone kneels down in front of it, for me, that’s a very disrespectful thing because you should stand up and (praise) these people as well as that flag of the United States.”

“When she does something like that, she is not representing the constituents of that town in the right way,” he later said.

Schlag is not going anywhere, at least until the voters head to the ballot box. In an interview with Connecticut Public Radio, she said she’s not going to resign, which should come as a shock to roughly no one. The only truly shocking thing, at least in this story, would be if Schlag doesn’t commit some very public act that’s equivalently disgraceful and meretriciously liberal in order to maintain her newly found public profile.

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Rest assured that she will again say she’s only committing said act out of “extreme sorrow” about Trump. Rest assured that liberals will again run to her side.

Rest assured, too, that conservative citizens will remember this disrespectful act — and whatever else she does from here on out. One hopes that’s enough to lead to her ejection from office.

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