Flashback: Sen. Sherrod Brown defended Sen. Kamala Harris against criticism from then-President Donald Trump, telling CNN that Trump supporters are “supporting a racist for president.”
“Well, I think it’s effective.” Brown said CNN’s Anderson Cooper was asked about President Trump calling Harris “nasty” and “mean.”
“The reason the 35 percent of Americans who support President Trump love him is because he appeals to the anger, the fear, the resentment, and often the racism of some, but not all, of his supporters,” Brown continued. “But remember, his supporters, whether they’re racist or not — I didn’t call them all racists, but I understand they’re supporting a racist for president, it’s working for them. It’s only alienating more and more of the public from him. That’s why so many of the public, including the people who voted for him, are fed up with Trump.”
Brown’s 2020 comments followed comments he made in 2019 on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in which he called Trump a racist.
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Sen. Sherrod Brown (left) said in 2020 that supporters of then-President Donald Trump knew they were supporting racists. (Getty Images)
“We have a racist president.” Brown says“He’s built his political career around questioning the legitimacy and origins of the president of the United States, knowing what he’s doing. I know there’s been a lot of reporting about what he did on housing issues early in his career.”
“It’s no secret that Sherrod Brown hates Donald Trump and his supporters, which is why he frequently insults Trump’s supporters and why he voted to impeach Trump twice,” Philip Letsow, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“But now that Brown needs their votes, he’s trying to cloak his anti-Trump extremism in misleading ads. We can all see through Sherrod’s shameless desperate tactic.”
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Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is photographed during a Senate vote, Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024, at the U.S. Capitol. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Brown, who is involved in the country’s most closely watched Senate race against Republican challenger Bernie Moreno in a state that Trump won by 8 points in 2020, has also introduced a resolution linking the U.S. immigration system to “structural racism.”
“Examples of structural racism include that members of Black, Native American, Alaska Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and Hispanic or Latino communities are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems, and that members of these communities are over-incarcerated and therefore at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 in prisons and jails.” Brown wrote In a resolution passed earlier this year.
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Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump (R) greets Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno during a rally at Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital asked Brown’s campaign whether the Ohio senator would stand by her 2020 comments about Trump’s alleged racism.
“Sherrod is fighting for all Ohioans, whether it’s a steelworker in Cleveland, a teacher in Cincinnati or a veteran in Chillicothe,” a Brown campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
“While Mr. Sherrod has always done the right thing for the people of Ohio, Bernie Moreno only thought about his own profits, stealing employee overtime pay, destroying critical evidence that a judge ordered preserved, and selling Chinese-made Buick Envision cars to the detriment of Ohio autoworkers.”
Republicans see the Moreno-Brown race as one of their best chances to regain control of the Senate in November, and the race between the two is expected to be close.
The Cook Political Report rates the race as a “50-50” chance.
