GOP Senate nominee Corey Stewart's spokesperson calls majority-black cities 'sh**holes'
The spokesperson of Virginia's Republican nominee for the United States Senate Corey Stewart reportedly referred to multiple American cities with a majority-black population as "sh**holes. Stewart is backed by President Donald Trump.
The Daily Beast on Sunday reported that Stewart's spokesperson, Rick Shaftan, also warned people against opening businesses in black neighborhoods. According to reports, Shaftan used the derogatory term for cities like New Orleans, Memphis, and Baltimore.
He also released a statement on Twitter after the killings of African-Americans by white police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, cautioning people to not open businesses in these regions.
Shaftan, in 2014, had reportedly tweeted: "After #Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood."
"The message out of Ferguson and Baltimore is a simple one: DON’T OPEN A BUSINESS IN A BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD!" Shaftan had tweeted again in 2015. His tweets have now been deleted.
The GOP Senate nominee's spokesperson also threatened to boycott New Orleans last year after the city decided to remove its confederate monuments. Shaftan had reportedly said: "You can run your gang-infested shithole without our tourist dollars and soon, our tax dollars."
Stewart's other spokesperson, Noel Fritsch, when presented with questions about Shaftan by HuffPost attempted to deflect the queries and said: "Far Left liberals and weak Republicans play the race card to shut down all debate, and meanwhile we can’t even have a conversation about how to improve the economy for blacks who ― as a direct result of decades of failed federal government programs ― haven’t seen economic growth in the last 50 years."
While Shaftan appeared undeterred by The Daily Beast's story on him and took to Facebook to taunt the media publication asking it to "look harder" for worse statements which he may have made in the past.
"I must have said something worse than that in all these years!” he wrote on Sunday. "They need to look harder."
Reports state that Stewart has previously campaigned against the removal of Confederate statues, claiming that the Confederate flag is not racist.