A spokesman for Corey Stewart, Virginia’s Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, is offering no apologies after it was revealed he called several majority Black U.S. cities “shitholes” and repeatedly warned against opening businesses in Black communities.
According to The Daily Beast, Rick Shaftan is no stranger to making disparaging remarks about Black people and, in a series of now-deleted tweets, likened Memphis, New Orleans and Baltimore to the largely Black “shithole” countries once described by President Donald Trump himself.
Former aide Rick Shaftan has a history of making disparaging remarks about Black people. (Image courtesy of WordPress)
Shaftan, who was once fired for questioning Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) in a profanity-laden interview, has twice called the NAACP “the Black KKK … only more violent and dangerous,” and even threatened to boycott “gang-infested” New Orleans last year over its removal of Confederate monuments. His derogatory comments continued online, after the killings of Black teens by white police officers in both Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo.
“Crazed black people looting a liquor store is the ultimate racist stereotype. #Ferguson,” he tweeted in 2014, adding ” … After #Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a Black neighborhood.”
Twitter screenshot.
Following unrest in Baltimore over the in-custody death of Freddie Gray, Shaftan tweeted, “The message out of Ferguson and Baltimore is a simple one: DON’T OPEN A BUSINESS IN A BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD!”
Another spokesman for Stewart tried to deflect from Shaftan’s comments, downplaying the severity of his tweets.
“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 …,” spokesman Noel Fritsch told HuffPost in a statement.
Shaftan himself reacted to The Daily Beast story in a Facebook post this weekend, brushing off the accusations
“I must have said something worse than that in all these years!” he wrote Sunday. “They need to look harder.”
