Trump-Backed GOP Senate Candidate Blames ‘Black People’ For Gun Violence in Resurfaced Clip
Arizona Senate candidate, Blake Masters, is under increased scrutiny since former President Donald Trump endorsed him last week in the GOP primary.
The increased scrutiny has led to the venture capitalist’s old interviews being resurfaced online and controversial past comments becoming the focus of attack ads.
News outlet Heartland Signal, which describes itself as a “newly launched regional digital newsroom anchored to the progressive radio station WCPT 820AM in Chicago,” resurfaced comments from April in which Masters blames “Black people” for gun violence in the U.S.
“We do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence,” Masters tells a local Arizona radio program in the clip.
“It’s gangs, it’s people in Chicago, in St. Louis, shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly. And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that,” he adds.
Blake Masters, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, blames gun violence on “Black people, frankly”:
“It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other.” pic.twitter.com/S1POQaZOAC
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) June 6, 2022
“What they mean by gun control is disarming you and me. I’m sure occasionally a ghost gun—a homemade firearm—is used in crime, but it’s pretty rare…usually, it’s just a black-market handgun,” Masters continues while speaking on The Jeff Oravits Show on April 11th.
“What they do when they ban things like ghost guns, when they ban things like pistol braces, which they’re trying to do, that’s all about disarming law-abiding people,” he adds.
Trump endorsed Masters last week calling him “a great modern-day thinker” who “knows that the ‘Crime of the Century’ took place, he will expose it and also, never let it happen again.” Masters has repeated Trump’s false allegations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Masters’s Republican opponent, Jim Lamon, released an attack ad over the weekend suggesting Masters is anti-semitic.
According to The Washington Examiner, the ad “largely draws upon an anti-war article Masters wrote as an undergraduate at Stanford University.”
“You think you know Blake Masters?” the ad begins.
“Did you know Blake Masters called World War II unjust and extensively quoted an antisemite who believes Jews and Zionists are bent on world domination? Did you know Blake Masters shared an article calling Israel ‘the North Korea of the Middle East’? Blake Masters even praised the Unabomber and unironically quoted a Nazi war criminal,” the ads narrator ads.
The Examiner notes that the ad is based on an “investigative piece written by Jewish Insider in April that details an article Masters wrote for a libertarian website back in 2006.”
Masters slammed the ad over the weekend, saying, “We knew they were going to try to call me a racist and a sexist and a terrorist. Well, it turns out, loser Republicans will do that too.”
Masters, like Ohio’s GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance, has been backed by one-time Silicon Valley insider, Peter Thiel, who has contributed some $13 million to the race.
