Mathew Palmer #

Introduction #

Mathew Palmer was an Atlanta-based flight attendant for Delta Air Lines who was fired in September 2025 over a two-word Facebook comment — “Good riddance” — written in response to the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s reporting, which AlterNet summarized, Palmer was notified of his suspension by the airline the day after writing the post and was terminated less than two weeks later. Delta’s chief executive later publicly defended the dismissal, saying a person who could say that about a murder victim had “lost the right to serve our customers.”

Background Information #

Palmer worked in a customer-facing role that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described in terms of brand stewardship: AlterNet, summarizing the AJC report, wrote that Delta had “fired its trained brand ambassador for sharing a negative opinion” about Kirk. According to AlterNet, Palmer, who is gay, had little sympathy for Kirk, whose public record included describing transgender individuals as an “abomination” and suggesting American society should have “just took care of” transgender people “the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s.”

Palmer had also been an opponent of unionizing at Delta. He said he had ignored overtures from the company’s union to join because he believed the airline protected its employees well. “Delta normally listens, which is one of the reasons I advocated against the union,” Palmer said. “I didn’t think you needed a union, because I thought Delta listened.”

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #

What is documented. What is on the record here is an employment consequence, not a criminal one: the Facebook comment (“Good riddance”), the suspension notification the day after it was written, and the termination less than two weeks later are documented in reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (summarized by AlterNet) and the Gwinnett Daily Post. Palmer was not accused of any crime. Delta publicly defended the firing, and no court was involved.

Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025. In the days that followed, Palmer wrote “Good riddance” of Kirk in a Facebook post. The Gwinnett Daily Post reported that the flight attendant “reportedly made a post on Facebook after Kirk’s death, in which he said ‘good riddance’ to the Turning Point USA co-founder,” and that he was fired two weeks later. Palmer was one of an undisclosed number of Delta employees affected by the company’s rapid response to employee speech about Kirk, in an environment where MAGA-aligned users were mobbing and reporting coworkers’ negative opinions to the company, per AlterNet.

Palmer said the company fired him with minimal correspondence, and he described the dismissal as involving little listening. It seemed, he said, “subjective and haphazard.” “What I saw was Delta is, in fact, a corporation, and your voice is as good as it is, as long as it is good to them,” Palmer said.

Public Reaction and Consequences #

Delta CEO Ed Bastian publicly defended the decision. Speaking at the Gas South District Speaker Series in Duluth, Georgia, in remarks reported by the Gwinnett Daily Post in October 2025, Bastian said the airline holds employees to a high standard and will not tolerate statements that “glorified violence” against others. “When someone gets murdered or assassinated in that fashion, the fact that somebody could actually say ‘good riddance’ about someone candidly … they’ve lost the right to be a Delta employee. They’ve lost the right to serve our customers,” Bastian said. “We serve a common good. We’ve got to be about serving for everyone regardless of their individual views.”

Bastian said Palmer was not the only employee sanctioned, though he distinguished between tiers of punishment. “A bunch of people we suspended kept their jobs,” he said. “We talked to each one of them about what was going on and those that were really egregious, they lost their jobs. They lost the opportunity to be (a Delta employee). It’s a privilege to be a Delta employee.” He compared the firing to Delta’s 2018 decision to break ties with the NRA after the Parkland school shooting.

The Delta AFA, a group working to become affiliated with the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, criticized the airline in a September 23 Facebook post. “Recent reports of disciplinary actions against flight attendants have made clear, once again, that we are in a one-way relationship with Delta management where management holds all of the power,” the group said.

Employment-law scholars framed the firing as part of a broader pattern. Deepa Das Acevedo, a professor at Emory University, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that employers across industries “are clamping down on employee speech, even when that speech is off duty and even when it’s fully legal.” In most states, including Georgia, most private employers are “entitled to do this” for at-will employees, she said, adding, “Our laws allow employers to own employee speech, 24/7.”

Current Status #

Palmer remained dismissed from Delta, and the reported details of his departure — suspension notice, termination, minimal correspondence — were unchanged in the most recent coverage. His view of his own earlier advocacy shifted: the headline of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report as carried by AlterNet was “Employee fired for 2-word Kirk comment regrets not joining union,” and Palmer’s quoted remarks — “I didn’t think you needed a union, because I thought Delta listened” — framed the firing as the moment that belief broke. What legal recourse he might pursue was not described in the sources; both accounts note he was not represented by the union he had opposed.

Impact on Their Career/Life #

The immediate consequence was the loss of his job at Delta over a two-word off-duty social media comment. Palmer’s own account emphasized how little process accompanied it: a suspension notice one day after a Facebook post, a termination within two weeks, and what he called minimal correspondence from an employer he had believed listened to its people.

The case became a data point in a larger debate over employee speech after Kirk’s assassination. Bastian’s remarks put Delta’s decision on the record as deliberate corporate policy — “It’s a privilege to be a Delta employee” — while the Delta AFA and Emory’s Das Acevedo described an environment in which employers can punish legal off-duty speech, particularly for non-union, at-will workers. For Palmer personally, the episode inverted a decade-long argument he had made about his workplace: the voice he thought Delta valued, he concluded, was valued only “as long as it is good to them.”