Last summer, as Black Lives Matter protesters were marching through an affluent St. Louis neighborhood to stage a demonstration outside the mayor’s home, a nearby white couple confronted and threatened the peaceful crowd. Mark McCloskey brandished an AR-15 outside his mansion, while his wife, Patricia, pointed a handgun at the crowd with her finger on the trigger. The late-June incident, which was captured in a viral video, became a conservative-media sensation, and the couple capitalized on their newfound fame by doing the rounds on cable news. Along with notoriety came felony charges, as the two were indicted for unlawful weapon use and evidence tampering. (They pleaded not guilty on both counts; Missouri governor Mike Parson said he’d pardon the pair if they were convicted.)
During a CNN interview on June 30, McCloskey justified his actions, claiming he was protecting his wife and home, while his attorney described the couple as civil rights advocates “completely behind” the BLM message. Such sympathies for BLM weren’t apparent on Tuesday, as he kicked off a Missouri Senate run with a promotional video falsely and hyperbolically claiming that an “angry mob came to destroy my house and kill my family.” That night he told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “God came knocking on my door last summer disguised as an angry mob, and it really did wake me up.”
The McCloskeys got their first unofficial taste of Republican campaigning last August, as the two were featured as guest speakers at the Republican National Convention, during which the couple accused the Democratic Party of plotting to “abolish” the suburbs. Since then, the McCloskeys have claimed that Donald Trump has personally spoken to them on the phone “semi-frequently.”
On Tuesday, McCloskey said that while campaigning for Trump, along with participating in other rallies and events, “what I’ve learned is that the people out there in this country are just sick and tired of cancel culture––and the poison of critical race theory and the big lie of systemic racism.” McCloskey went on to accuse Joe Biden of pushing “socialism” and said, “People have to stand up. Each and every one of us needs to stand up now and say we’re not sheep, we’re free people…If we don’t stand up now and take this country back, it’s going away.”
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