The campaign director for a book-burning Missouri Secretary of State candidate took the mic at St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ “Cabinet in Community” forum on Tuesday — blasting her as a “diversity mayor” and blaming her for recent high-profile incidents that happened far outside the City of St. Louis’ borders.
Jones quickly shut down Maicoll Gomez, who is the brother and campaign manager of Valentina Gomez. A 24-year-old Benton Park resident, Valentina Gomez is attempting to fight the culture wars in the Republican primary to replace Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. She previously had her 15 minutes of fame in St. Louis when she burned two library books with queer themes in a sad and unhinged publicity stunt in February.
Maicoll Gomez took the mic at the forum on April 23 to berate Jones as she answered community questions.
“Mayor — Travis Wolfe, Ellie Bentley, Kaylee Gain — these are all people that have been affected because you’ve not backed law enforcement,” Gomez says as captured by a livestream of the event. “Mayor, let's be honest, every diversity mayor like you, like the one in New York, Chicago, LA, have destroyed the cities [...]”
Ignoring the fact that both Wolfe and Gain were the victims of crimes in Hazelwood, a full 17 miles from the city that Jones governs, Gomez pushed on to his next point, claiming that unemployment and shootings are rising.
“What’s your question?” Jones asks him.
Gomez says he is getting to that.
“People are leaving, shootings happening almost every single day, law enforcement is not getting the support they need. I am part of the National Guard and so I took an oath to protect the greatest country on earth, but yet we have people like you that are hypocrites and then they are criminalizing —”
“Okay you know what,” Jones cuts him off. “You are not gonna stand in my community and call me a hypocrite.”
Gomez starts to speak again, and again Jones stops him.
“Excuse me, no,” she says repeatedly as a staffer tries to take back the microphone.
“What are you going to do to make the city safer?” Gomez asks.
“I’m already at work,” Jones says. “Ask any of the law enforcement here if I back law enforcement, and they will tell you yes. They got the biggest raise in 20 years under my administration.”
Other community members in the audience began applauding Jones as she continued to clap back against Gomez.
“You are not going to come into my community and call me a hypocrite,” she says. “I’m not gonna have it.” More applause. “We can have a dialogue and we can be respectful, but I’m not gonna have it.”
The video captures an unintelligible reply, apparently by Gomez.
“You can excuse yourself,” Jones tells him.
Reached by email, Maicoll Gomez offered more of the same, asking that the RFT “please be sure to include my statement to it's [sic] entirety.”
“Mayor Jones's team forcibly took away the microphone from me as they are afraid of the truth and not being able to control the narrative. I welcome a conversation with Mayor Jones any day, but I know she will never agree to this because she understands that every diversity mayor like her, and the ones in New York, Chicago, LA, and Kansas City have all destroyed their respective cities. Crime, illegal immigration, and fentanyl overdoses in these cities have only increased since they took office. Mayor Jones can raise the salaries of police officers to 1 million dollars and we will still see shootings happening everyday. She has to lock up criminals because catch and release does not work. She interrupted me because I clearly said something that hit a nerve. Mayor Jones and her new shiny ‘world class’ chief of police are hypocrites. Chief Tracy failed to solve crime in his previous work posts as a leader for the Chicago and New York City police departments- cities with the highest gun laws restrictions across the country. Now, he's the chief of Police in Saint Louis executing the exact same result from his two previous failures, being a prime example of incompetence. Criminals do not care about the law, these gun laws that the chief talked about only affect law abiding citizens.
“Don't forget Valentina's primary is on August 6th! We are honored to have your unconditional support.”
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