So about that whole "civility" thing: How does this fit? Virginia Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart, who has a bit of a white nationalist problem, also has a campaign spokesperson, Rick Shaftan, who wants to be the embodiment of Trump in that he thinks it's cute to call places "shit-holes."
Not just random places, but American cities like Memphis, New Orleans, and Baltimore—three cities with populations that are majority African American. These tweets are as recent as March of this year, but Rick Shaftan has a well-documented history of racists tweets. In 2014, after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, he tweeted "Crazed black people looting a liquor store is the ultimate racist stereotype. #Ferguson." He followed that up with "After #Ferguson, only a fool would start, finance or insure a business in a black neighborhood," and after turmoil in the streets of Baltimore following the killing of Freddy Gray, he tweeted "The message out of Ferguson and Baltimore is a simple one: DON'T OPEN A BUSINESS IN A BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD!"
Oh yeah, and he worked for a PAC supporting unrepentant white nationalist Paul Nehlen in Wisconsin in 2016. But somehow that doesn't count, he told the Daily Beast. "There was no sign he was anything other than a Trump guy, pretty much." Because no way a "Trump guy" would be a racist, right?
Much like Corey Stewart, who has "a birther past and connections to white nationalists and a virulent anti-Semite" and also calls himself a "proud southerner" (who is from Minnesota) and says of himself "I was Trump before Trump was Trump."
Birds of a feather flock to Trump.
