The spokesman for Corey Stewart, the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Virginia, referred to three majority-Black U.S. cities as s**tholes, according to a report by The Daily Beast.
Rick Shaftan used the phrase when describing Memphis, New Orleans and Baltimore, saying that people should boycott New Orleans over its decision to remove Confederate monuments, per HuffPost.
“You can run your gang-infested s**thole without our tourist dollars and soon, our tax dollars,” he allegedly said in one of the now-deleted tweets.
Shaftan also said, “The word #S**thole is an appropriate one to describe this particular s**thole” when Baltimore replaced a Confederate statue with one of Harriet Tubman, per the Daily Beast.
Noel Fritsch, another spokesman for Stewart, told the HuffPost in a statement that liberals are playing the race card in response to Shaftan’s 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,” he said.
Shaftan posted the Daily Beast story on his Facebook on Sunday saying, “I must have said something worse than that in all these years!” he wrote. “They need to look harder.”
Following the protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the death of Mike Brown, an unarmed Black teen killed by police, Shaftan tweeted disparaging comments about Black people.
“Crazed Black people looting a liquor store is the ultimate racist stereotype. #Ferguson,” he wrote in 2014.
Stewart, who is backed by President Donald Trump, has been a lightning rod of controversy.
He’s been connected to Neo-Confederate groups, according to the Daily Beast, and has refused to denounce violence by White supremacists.
