Retired postal worker turned anti-Trump crusader Gale McCray clutched his simple but increasingly infamous sign earlier this week while standing on a grassy median near Hulen Street and Bellaire Drive. “Trump: That Boy Don’t Act Right,” the sign reads. It didn’t take long for passing motorists to respond, some with shouts, most with hand signals – thumbs-ups, friendly waves, or not-so-friendly one-finger salutes.
“I get every kind of reaction,” he said over the noise of passing cars and strong winds.
That’s really all he’s looking for, he said, honest reactions. He’s never been particularly political and isn’t trying to change anyone’s mind, just making his opinion known.
“I do it because Trump is president,” he said. “I don’t do it because a Republican is president. I wouldn’t be doing this if it was anybody else.”
McCray sounds like a shade-tree psychologist when he tries to explain why Donald Trump sets him off.
“He is a flim-flam man,” he said. “He’s out of control. He has been compensating his whole life for the emptiness inside of him.”
Don’t expect McCray to get too worked up. The 75-year-old Fort Worth resident enjoys himself now that he’s found his calling. He makes months-long jaunts around the country to flash his sign, making friends wherever he goes, including about 40 of them who extend open invitations for him to crash on their couches while he’s roaming around. Later this week, he will begin making his way to Washington, D.C., where he carried his sign for the first time last year.
“I just roamed the capital with that big ol’ sign,” he said. “People like it and want pictures taken with it.”
A recent online funding campaign raised $3,000 in 10 days to pay for McCray’s travel expenses.
In the past year, dozens of newspapers and bloggers have covered his crusade. He’s become a meme. He’s been YouTubed, tweeted, Instagrammed, and everything else’d, and he created a Facebook page, Old Man With a Sign, that now has more than 4,000 followers. Seems like the only news media outlet ignoring him is from the city of his birth, Lawton, Oklahoma.
“My hometown newspaper is so right wing, it won’t do a story about the sign,” he said.
He’s not left or right. He’s just pointing out that Trump is not right.