A longtime community advocate employed in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams was fired on Thursday after he posted critical remarks about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk a day following Kirk’s fatal shooting in Utah on Wednesday.

On his Facebook account, Tony Herbert reposted a meme that said: “CHARLIE KIRK SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE DISPARAGING IMMIGRANTS, DISRESPECTING WOMEN, AND BLAMING BLACK FOLKS, ONLY TO GET SHOT IN ONE OF THE WHITEST PLACES ON EARTH.”

In his posting Herbert added: “you hit the nail right on the head or should i say racist!!”

Herbert later shared a video saying he was happy about his prior post because it helped him identify people on his social media page who he now believes to be “racist.”

While he referred to the incident in Utah as an “unfortunate shooting of a human being,” he also said Kirk had “helped his own demise.”

“When you go out there and you talk about people and you talk about – and you know, become a racist – and you try to disguise that like you’re doing something for humanity, that’s a problem,” Herbert said in the posting. “And unfortunately karma has come to collect.”

Herbert, 61, who appears to have since removed the posts, didn’t respond to a phone call and text messages seeking comment.

He was on leave from his $105,000 position as a community liaison in the Adams administration when he was terminated, according to City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus, who noted that Herbert was not a direct report to Adams. 

“We unequivocally denounce these remarks, which in no way reflect the values of the Adams administration,” she said in a statement. 

“As Mayor Adams said yesterday, political violence has no place in our city or in our nation, and it’s time we all turn down the temperature and stand united against hate,” she added. “Charlie Kirk was a passionate young man, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this trying time.”

Mamelak Altus didn’t respond when asked why Herbert was on leave, but he recently advocated for Adams’ reelection in an online editorial. 

Herbert was hired by the Adams administration in February 2022 as a community coordinator with a salary of just under $84,000, public records show. More recently he was serving as citywide liaison to the public housing community, according to an interview posted online this week, with a salary of nearly $105,000 per year.

In that interview, Herbert advocated for Adams’ re-election while referring to himself as a “fraternal brother to the mayor” and a “big supporter.”

Herbert was among the participants in a secret Freemason ceremony at Gracie Mansion in the fall of 2023 that inducted Adams, then NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, and other government and elected officials into the fraternal group, according to a story in Gothamist.

A year prior, Hell Gate reported that Herbert was driving a Jeep fitted with emergency lights and sirens and with what appeared to be an illegal license plate cover.

Previously, he was a government staffer and community advocate in Brooklyn who ran for elected office a number of times, including for Public Advocate in 2017 and 2021. 

Public Advocate candidate Tony Herbert disrupts a press conference held by elected officials on conditions on Rikers Island, Sept. 13, 2021. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Herbert has also operated nonprofits that spoke out against youth and gun violence and, in 2015, made waves for steering a wooden coffin onto the grounds of City Hall in protest of what he contended was then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mishandling of violent crime in the city. 

Kirk, a 31-year-old married father of two, is a revered figure in conservative and Christian circles who was close to President Donald Trump and other top Republican officials, but also widely condemned for disparaging remarks about Black, immigrant and gay people. 

In the wake of his killing on the campus of Utah Valley University by what appeared to be a lone gunman, the Trump administration has taken steps to celebrate him on a national scale, including by ordering flags lowered to half staff, while the State Department cautioned “foreigners” in the United States against making incendiary remarks following Kirk’s death that glorify violence or hatred. 

On Friday, officials in Utah announced that law enforcement had captured a 22-year-old suspect in Kirk’s shooting, identified as Tyler Robinson, according to The New York Times.  

Herbert’s posts on Kirk surfaced on X as screenshots called out by policing and politics podcast host John Macari, a former lieutenant in the NYPD, who referred to the meme as “disgusting” and “racist.”

Within hours, conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg responded in an X post saying, in reference to Herbert, “he’s FIRED.”

Rosenberg, who has been a close supporter of Adams despite a period of tension with the administration, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

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