#Utah man who coughed on BLM protesters apologizes — sort of

The Utah man caught on viral video coughing on Black Lives Matter protesters says he apologizes to everyone but the victim after he lost his job and started getting death threats for the stunt.

Robert Brissette, 42, told The Post Sunday that the BLM group “goaded” him into lashing out, throwing rocks at his pickup truck to get things rolling.

“The action was screwed up on my part,” Brissette said. “I should never have done that, and that part I apologize for. But to the person that I did it at, I do not apologize to. I apologize to the general public for being a dumb s—t doing that. But the person I did it at deserved it.”

“I only made the sound,” he claimed. “I didn’t spit on them or anything. I fake-coughed. It was a fake.”

Brissett was pumping gas at a Kanab, Utah, gas station when he says the protesters began hurling stones.

He said he and others at the station had laughed when another truck “rolled coal” the protesters — the term for a vehicle spewing out a thick, black cloud of exhaust smoke to taunt someone.

Brissette said that’s when the insults and stones began flying.

He claims he came face-to-face with the protesters twice, first coughing 11 times and the second time knocking a cap off the head of the protest’s organizer after he said she slapped him three times in the face.

The video doesn’t capture that part of the exchange.

Kanab police did not respond to a request for comment, but Brissette said they opted not to charge him in the incident. He’d previously begun raising money for legal defense on a crowd-funding website, but said Sunday he took the page down when he was not charged with any crimes.

Nonetheless, he said he’s now had to disable all his social media accounts and get a new phone because of the avalanche of threats.