Extreme Political Viewpoint in Minnesota - Valley News Live - KVLY/KXJB - Fargo/Grand Forks

The political season often brings out the best and the worst in people, and one Rochester, Minnesota, family is taking their political viewpoint to the extreme with a disturbing visual presentation. Political yard signs speak to a person's political preference -- but a chair hanging from a tree? That is a completely different story.

Kevin Mulholland put up the display after the Republican National Convention speech of Clint Eastwood in which Eastwood portrayed President Obama as an empty chair. 

"This [president] needs to go," Mulholland said. "He needs to get fired. I mean, people need to kick him out of the White House."

Mulholland says the set-up is not a representation of hate speech, but simply his own political beliefs. "People say that I'm racist. Well, maybe I am a little toward this president," Mulholland explained. "I'm not toward Black people, [but] I am toward the President of the United States."

Neighbors are alarmed by the message Mulholland's hanging chair seems to express.

"A lynching, immediately. That was my personal opinion seeing it," said Kasson resident Jim Postier. "I just visualized a lynching. You see a swinging mass with a noose."

The Diversity Council agrees that Mulholland's display may be cross the line. "For me, that display illustrates hate and violence," said Diversity Council Executive Director Kay Hocker,  "and I think that it violates the values that the majority of our community holds. ... I know that many people will view it as hate speech or a display of hatred, and while that is not illegal, it is damaging to people and hurtful to people."