Meme that appeared on Mark McAllister’s Facebook page in early January, 2020
In 2013, former G.J. Mayor Bill Pitts said that the most money anyone had ever spent on a City Council race up until that time was around $3,000.
In 2013, that amount had jumped to $10,000 to $12,000 per candidate for city council campaigns.
Now, in 2021, candidates for local office are routinely spending up to $20-30k on their campaigns.
That marked increase in the amount of spending should be accompanied by an equally higher level of scrutiny of candidates by the local press and media, but it hasn’t. The local paper seems to be giving candidates a pass by doing nice things like sending candidates a softball questionnaire and publishing their answers in full, without even verifying whether the candidates filled in the answers themselves.
Racist posts
Another meme McAllister posted compared a photo of California Congresswoman Maxine Waters to an alien character from the 1988 Arnold Schwartzenegger movie “Predator”
One of those posts from January, 2020 was a racist meme depicting President Trump placing a noose over the head of former President Barack Obama, with the word “TREASON” written at the top of the graphic.
Xenophobic posts
In July of 2018, Mr. McAllister shared a Facebook post containing a quote falsely attributed to an Oxford professor of Islamic studies named Tariq Ramadan. The quote read,
“We are not here to adopt western values. We are here to colonize the U.S. and Canada and spread Islamic Sharia Law. Canada has one of the easiest legal systems to penetrate and advance Sharia from within, but if that doesn’t work, we won’t hesitate to use violent Jihad.”
Meme with false quote that McAllister shared on Facebook in July of 2018
Pretty scary stuff, but it was a lie. The professor never said it. By the time Mr. McAllister posted it, the meme had been debunked months before by Snopes, in February of 2018, in a post titled “Did a Muslim Scholar Advocate ‘Colonizing’ U.S. and Canada with Sharia Law?”
Snopes concluded the claim was “false.”
Sharing doctored images accompanied by false claims
According to a July 12, 2018 article in the Colorado Times Recorder,
“McCallister also shared a post by the Mesa County Republican Party that featured a photoshopped image falsely depicting an Antifa (anti-fascist) supporter attacking a police officer. The link itself was connected to an opinion piece, but the image the author used to promote the column on Facebook was debunked by Snopes last summer: “Antifa Member Photographed Beating Police Officer?”
The original image was from a 2009 riot in Greece.
Photoshopped image of a riot in Greece that Mr. McAllister and the Mesa County GOP shared and falsely portrayed as an Antifa supporter attacking a police officer.
Grand Junction citizens deserve to know if candidates have posted, shared or permitted racist, sexist or xenophobic information, or outright lies on their social media accounts.
Greg Haitz is another candidate who has shared false information on his social media. In his case, he shared a false article amid the pandemic that said face mask are harmful to children. That post was removed by Facebook for being false. That’s important to know.
But Mr. McAllister’s consistently racist, xenophobic and false posts have drawn even greater notice, multiple times now, and have been documented in published articles. It shows he harbors a level of animosity towards some groups of Americans that is so great that it should disqualify him — and anyone else like that — from running for any public office, anywhere.
Regarding a comment at the top of your Blog….FREE SPEECH, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME. All I can say is you get what you pay for.
Regarding Maxine Waters looking like the alien in the movie Predator, I would say anyone on the street might see the similarity. Will note the Alien was played by BLACK ACTOR Kevin Peter Hall, sadly deceased, who was definitely better looking than Maxine with or without makeup. How was that comparison racist? Would you be upset at photos of Winston Churchill looking like his bulldog? It is quite obvious that while you demand truth and accuracy from everyone else, you do not
bother yourself with facts in any form before you spew your extremely biased opinions online. Discerning people who bother to use their brains are laughing.
Not sure if Mr. McAllister is aware of this blog… I find it pretty juvenile. I’m still undecided about who I’m voting for. But I would love to hear his feedback on this. I wouldnt be surprised if he files a defamation of character lawsuit here. I guess we will see
Having McCallister win a seat on the city council would be gut wrenchingly sad. He is completely unqualified and untrustworthy, but desperately, narcissistically power hungry. He would stab you in the back with a smile on his face and a laugh on his lips to glean a nickel out of you. He has no shame, no moral compass, and no motivation to serve anyone but himself. He’s not just a sh***y trumplican, he’s a genuinely sh***y person regardless of political persuasion.
And you know this how?
Years of interacting with him.
Oh great, more of Putin’s puppets trying to impose their stupidity on our happy valley.
The original Putin is the Catholic Church and their BS Jesus Christ, manipulating the ignorant.