Missouri health official says GOP Senate candidate encouraged racist taunts

St. Louis County Health Director Faisal Khan wrote an op-ed Wednesday laying out the physical threats and racist slurs he was subjected to by a crowd of Donald Trump supporters enraged over new mask guidance in the county amid a surging outbreak of COVID-19.

Khan wrote an op-ed for the Riverfront Times, in which he said Trump supporters at a Tuesday night meeting on the new mask rules mocked his accent, physically assaulted him, and hurled racist and vulgar insults such as “fat brown cunt” and “brown bastard.”

And Khan accused Missouri GOP Senate hopeful Mark McCloskey — infamous for waving a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 — of encouraging that behavior from the crowd.

Khan said he had never in his life “been subjected to the racist, xenophobic, and threatening behavior that greeted me in the County Council meeting,” adding that McCloskey and GOP St. Louis City Councilman Tim Fitch encouraged the behavior.

“My time before the Council began with a dog-whistle question from Councilman Tim Fitch, who said he wanted to emphasize for the assembled crowd that I was not from this country,” Khan wrote.

He later added, “I later saw that around the time that Mr. Fitch asked his question, his friend Mark McCloskey — who was seated right behind me and situated near Mr. Fitch’s position on the dais — posted on social media that mask mandates are ‘un-American.'”

“One cannot help but see the connection between the efforts of Mr. McCloskey and Mr. Fitch to stoke xenophobia against me,” Khan wrote.

McCloskey is one of a number of GOP candidates running for Senate in Missouri to replace retiring Republican Sen. Roy Blunt.

Along with his wife, he shot to the public’s attention after a photo was circulated in 2020 that showed him and his wife waving guns at BLM demonstrators in his upscale St. Louis gated community. McCloskey has since pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault for his actions.

As Republicans like McCloskey rage against new public health guidelines, Missouri is currently having one of the worst COVID outbreaks in the country.

Hospitalizations and deaths are surging in the state thanks to poor vaccination rates. Just 41% of the state is fully vaccinated, one of the worst vaccination rates in the country.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.