Politics
FLASHBACK: Vulnerable Dem senator accused voters supporting Trump of 'racism': 'It works for them'
![FLASHBACK: Vulnerable Dem senator accused voters supporting Trump of 'racism': 'It works for them' FLASHBACK: Vulnerable Dem senator accused voters supporting Trump of 'racism': 'It works for them'](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/file-8.png)
FLASHBACK: While defending then-Sen. Kamala Harris against criticism from then-President Donald Trump, Sen. Sherrod Brown told CNN that Trump voters are “supporting a racist for president.”
“Well I think it works,” Brown told CNN’s Anderson Cooper when asked about Trump calling Harris “horrible” and “nasty.”
“It’s the reason that the 35 percent of Americans that support President Trump love President Trump, because he plays to the anger and fear and resentment and often to racism of not all but some of his supporters,” Brown continued. “But keep in mind, his supporters are, whether they’re – while I’ve not called all of them racist, I understand that they are supporting a racist for President, but it works for them. It just drives more and more of the public away from him. And that’s why so much of the public has just had it with Trump, including some that voted for him.”
Brown’s 2020 comment followed a comment in 2019 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he also called Trump racist.
‘PREGNANT PERSONS’: OHIO SEN SHERROD BROWN SCRUBBED ‘WOMEN’ FROM BILL ON PREGNANCY
Sen. Sherrod Brown, left, said in 2020 that then-President Donald Trump’s supporters knew they were supporting a racist. (Getty Images)
“We have a president who’s a racist,” Brown said. “He built his political career knowing what he was doing, questioning the legitimacy and the birthplace of the president of the United States. I know early there have been all kinds of news reports about what he did early in his career with housing.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, National Republican Senatorial Committee Spokesperson Philip Letsou said, “It’s no secret that Sherrod Brown hates Donald Trump and his supporters, it’s why he regularly insults Trump voters and voted to impeach Trump twice.”
“But now that he needs their votes, Brown is trying to cover up his anti-Trump radicalism with misleading ads. Everyone can see through Shameless Sherrod’s desperate ploy.”
‘MISSING’ SIGNS AT DNC CALL OUT DEMOCRAT IN KEY SENATE RACE WHO SKIPPED CONVENTION WITH DISPUTED EXCUSE
![Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/02/1200/675/sherrod-brown.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is seen during senate votes in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Brown, who is involved in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country against GOP challenger Bernie Moreno in a state that Trump won by 8 points in 2020, also introduced a resolution tying the immigration system in the United States to “structural racism.”
“Whereas examples of structural racism include…that members of the Black, Native American, Alaska Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic or Latino communities are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems and face a higher risk of contracting COVID–19 within prison populations and detention centers due to the over-incarceration of members of those communities,” Brown wrote in the resolution earlier this year.
![Moreno, Trump shaking hands](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/03/1200/675/GettyImages-20897431631.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, right, greets Ohio Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bernie Moreno during a rally at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital asked the Brown campaign whether the Ohio senator stands by his 2020 comment on Trump’s alleged racism.
“Sherrod fights for all Ohioans – whether you’re a steelworker in Cleveland or a teacher in Cincinnati or a veteran in Chillicothe,” a Brown campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
“While Sherrod always does the right thing for Ohioans, Bernie Moreno only looks out for himself and stole his workers’ overtime pay, shredded key evidence a judge ordered him to keep, and sold the Chinese-made Buick Envision, which hurt Ohio autoworkers.”
The race between Moreno and Brown is expected to be a close one as Republicans view it as one of their strongest opportunities to take back control of the Senate in November.
The Cook Political report ranks the race as a “toss up.”
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Politics
Granderson: Trump keeps talking about bacon prices, but that's not making the point he intends
When it comes to the price of bacon, Donald Trump is absolutely right: It’s too damn high. What he doesn’t tell you when he brings this up on the campaign trail — which is a lot — is that the sharp increase was headed our way while he was in the White House.
Opinion Columnist
LZ Granderson
LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in America.
In 2018, 61% of California voters passed Proposition 12, which required the space for breeding pigs and their piglets to be increased to a new standard — which only 4% of pork suppliers met at the time. Essentially the industry had to choose between spending money to meet the new requirements or risking losing the nation’s most populous state as a customer.
The industry challenged the constitutionality of the new law. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in California’s favor, and the law took full effect a bit over a year ago. Two of the justices in favor were selected by Trump.
“While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote.
California’s law is not the only factor that has made bacon more expensive. There’s also Trump’s initial handling of the pandemic.
On Feb. 7, 2020, after speaking with the president of China, Trump was interviewed by journalist Bob Woodward. On the recording the former president said: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch — you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air. That’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your — you know, your — even your strenuous flu.”
Yet on Feb. 10, he told the country “a lot of people think that goes away in April.”
By “that” he meant COVID-19.
On March 30, he doubled down: “Stay calm. It will go away.”
He later told Woodward: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
This wishful thinking was not an effective containment strategy.
In April 2020, Tyson and Smithfield — two of the largest meat processors in the country — were forced to shut down plants because their employees were getting sick.
As late as Aug. 31 that year, Trump was still telling the country: “It’s going to go away.” (Update from four years later: It hasn’t gone away.)
But in 2020, thousands of people were dying daily, the supply chain was at a standstill and tens of thousands of pigs were being euthanized because of the plant closures. When do you ever see big businesses just eat a loss of revenue? We know it’s usually passed on to the customer, unless competition is keeping prices reasonable. When Proposition 12 passed in 2018, 70% of the market was controlled by four hog processing companies.
And so like clockwork, in January 2021 the average cost for a pound of bacon was $5.83, and by October it was $7.31. Consumers noticed. In trying to reach voters struggling to make ends meet, Trump has focused on the cost of bacon as the anecdote to use when attacking Biden’s economic policies. He couldn’t have chosen a worse example to make his case: The price of a BLT was destined to jump around now regardless of whether Trump or President Biden were in office. And it was Trump’s own handling of the pandemic that exacerbated the issues surrounding the cost of bacon.
In April 2020, House Democrats introduced the Price Gouging Prevention Act to try to stop corporate America from taking advantage of the pandemic to raise profits, but Trump was still telling the country “this is going to go away.” The bill went nowhere, because of Republican opposition. Even though Senate Democrats — including then-Sen. Kamala Harris — sponsored a companion bill to match the House initiative.
We saw the same script with gas prices. In 2022, House Democrats passed a gas price gouging bill. Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t get on board to solve the problem facing consumers; they wanted to ensure that Trump could campaign by complaining about gas prices.
So much for “America first,” right?
It’s quite telling that Trump felt misleading voters about the pandemic was a better campaign strategy than winning voters over by leading us through it. During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris warned the nation that Trump is not a serious man but that reelecting him would have serious consequences. His rhetoric around the price of bacon is the perfect illustration.
In March 2020, Trump himself issued an executive order intended to prevent price gouging. Today he characterizes Harris’ call for a national price gouging ban as “communist,” even though 37 states — including ones that voted for him in 2016 and 2020 — already have similar bans. Trump likes to complain about current-day America as if he’s a fresh face with a new vision, but he does have a record we can refer to. In January 2017, bacon was $5.18 a pound. That September, while Trump was issuing “Citizenship Day” proclamations, the price of bacon reached a then-record $6.36, and surprisingly, he didn’t fault the White House.
That’s because pointing out the cost of bacon wouldn’t have been a good look for him then. When you look at the facts today, they don’t look good for him now either.
Politics
Trump, Kamala aiming for the middle with varying degrees of success
![Trump, Kamala aiming for the middle with varying degrees of success Trump, Kamala aiming for the middle with varying degrees of success](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/trump-harris-recent-split.jpg)
Everyone wants to be a centrist now.
It’s all the rage.
Now if an ordinary person, say a friend of yours, changed positions on major issues, they would probably offer you an explanation. But politicians play by a different set of rules.
After a primary season in which both Donald Trump and now Kamala Harris have been laser-focused on riling up their base, both are edging–in some cases sprinting–toward the center.
VP HARRIS ACCUSED OF ‘ACTIVELY ENCOURAGING’ ILLEGAL MIGRATION — AND COORDINATING WITH MEXICO
Political theft is not a crime, or the jails would be packed to capacity.
Harris, in Las Vegas, blatantly ripped off Trump’s proposal to bar taxes on tips to service workers.
The focus has been on the vice president, not just because she’s new to the race but because she has studiously avoided the press until her sitdown with CNN’s Dana Bash. She does regularly come back on the plane for off-the-record sessions, with each reporter present getting a question. But obviously that’s of limited value to the rest of us.
The larger problem for Harris is that she has a host of far-left positions she took in her 2020 presidential run that she had abandoned without explanation.
Vice President Kamala Harris raised eyebrows when telling CNN’s Dana Bash that her “value’s haven’t changed” after making complete reversals on far-left positions she held in 2019. (Screenshot/CNN)
These include the abolition of private health insurance (under Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All); her past opposition to fracking, and embrace of decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
Her repeated refrain; “My values have not changed.”
On fracking, Harris told CNN, “I made clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking as vice president.” That is not true. She said Joe Biden would not ban fracking.
The VP did offer something of an explanation, that the administration had created over 300,000 clean energy jobs and “that tells me…we can do it without banning fracking.”
FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP RIPS ‘DISHONEST MEDIA’ OVER MISREPRESENTATION OF JOKES
Bash cited another blast from the past: “There was a debate. You raised your hand when asked whether or not the border should be decriminalized. Do you still believe that?”
Harris: “I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally.” No mention of why she shifted her stance.
What Kamala is doing is what most general-election candidates do: moving toward the center. Whatever she thought matched the mood of the country in 2019, including her earlier career as a prosecutor, is clearly untenable today.
But on the Republican side, Trump is doing the same thing. It’s just getting less attention because he makes plenty of other news, from the Arlington Cemetery flap to personal attacks on Harris.
![Trump rallies in NC](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/GettyImages-2167188868.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
(Kate Medley for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
This has been most visible on abortion, which has become a difficult subject for Republicans. On one level, Trump owns the issue, because it was his three Supreme Court justices who enabled the overturning of Roe after a half-century of precedent.
But now he’s said that Florida’s 6-week ban on the procedure is too short, that he believes there need to be more weeks. There was some backtracking on whether he’d support a competing initiative in the state, but not on the comments about 6 weeks, when many women don’t know they’re pregnant.
When I interviewed the former president at Mar-a-Lago, he indicated he would favor a 15- or 16-week abortion ban – but decided at the state level, under the SCOTUS ruling.
WHY KAMALA HARRIS AND DANA BASH GET A MIXED GRADE IN VP’S FIRST MEDIA SIT DOWN
“He also declared that “my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” This has triggered a backlash among some pro-life groups, who now deem Trump essentially pro-choice.
Trump is basically sliding to the center, to make his position more palatable to a wider range of voters, especially women, even though he has boasted about the repeal of Roe.
(In that Mar-a-Lago interview, I asked Trump why he changed his mind on TikTok after trying to ban the Chinese-owned app as president. He said that would help Facebook, which he’s more concerned about, and of course TikTok has an enthusiastic base of younger users.)
Over the weekend, Trump said he would back another Florida measure, to legalize recreational use of marijuana. He said the state should not “ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars” by prosecuting people who possess small amounts for personal use. Again, a move toward a more moderate position that has drawn flak from some conservatives.
![Trump Arlington Cemetery](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/GettyImages-2168624619-scaled.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Kamala accused him of, well, a flip-flop. She said that as president his Justice Department cracked down on pot smokers.
Part of what’s going on is that both candidates ignore the timing of past stances for political benefit. A Trump ad has Harris saying “Everyday prices are too high. Food, rent, gas, back-to-school clothes,” edited into “Bidenomics is working.”
Harris was talking about high prices caused by the pandemic in a speech last month, and “Bidenomics” was from a speech last year when she was reacting to a monthly jobs report.
Kamala says Trump is pushing Project 2025, although he disavowed the Heritage project early on and repeatedly (though it’s staffed by many of his former White House aides).
Moving to the center is an art form, and that’s what both candidates are attempting right now.
Politics
Mike Garcia campaign runs misleading ad on the House Republican's role in Violence Against Women Act
![Mike Garcia campaign runs misleading ad on the House Republican's role in Violence Against Women Act Mike Garcia campaign runs misleading ad on the House Republican's role in Violence Against Women Act](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e527e5f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8640x4536+0+612/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb0%2F6a%2F84336e41409880001645c4038517%2Fap23014612000699.jpg)
In its first advertisement for the general election season, the campaign for Rep. Mike Garcia, a politically vulnerable Santa Clarita Republican, offers a misleading description of the congressman’s role in passing the Violence Against Women Act, which provides aid for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
The 30-second advertisement, titled “Voices,” was released Tuesday. It features an unnamed female constituent who says: “Mike co-sponsored the Violence Against Women Act to protect us against domestic violence. That’s why we need Mike Garcia in Congress.”
Garcia made the same co-sponsorship claim at a Santa Clarita town hall event last month, calling his support “a big deal” because “not very many Republicans” had sponsored reauthorization of the landmark 1994 law.
But in 2021, Garcia voted against a version of the reauthorization measure that was passed by the Democratic House majority, joining conservatives who protested provisions that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ people and tightened gun access for people convicted of abusing or stalking a dating partner. Instead, Garcia co-sponsored a Republican-led stop-gap measure to renew the act for one year, minus the new provisions, that failed to move forward.
He was not a co-sponsor of the amended reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that Democratic President Biden ultimately signed into law the following year as part of a wide-ranging federal spending measure. It is that version of the act that remains in force today.
The Garcia campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Garcia’s Democratic opponent, George Whitesides, also released his first ad on Tuesday. The 30-second TV spot, titled “Experience,” highlights Whitesides’ time as a NASA chief of staff and a chief executive of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic.
“I’ll use my business experience to solve problems instead of playing politics,” Whitesides says in the ad.
The race between Garcia and Whitesides to represent Congressional District 27 in northern Los Angeles County, including the Antelope Valley, is one of the most competitive — and consequential — in the country.
Erin Covey, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, said the race will be crucial in determining whether Republicans maintain their narrow majority in the U.S. House. Although Garcia has been elected three times, he represents a district where Democrats hold a significant voter registration advantage, and which President Biden won by double digits in 2020.
“I think this is going to be a race to watch,” Covey said during a roundtable discussion at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month. “It’s suburban. It’s diverse. It’s a race where [Vice President Kamala] Harris should really be a boost.”
George Whitesides, a Democrat looking to unseat Garcia, is advertising his past as a NASA chief of staff and as Virgin Galactic CEO, saying he created hundreds of local jobs.
(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
The new ads by Garcia and Whitesides mark the start of a major advertising blitz that will inundate Southern California airwaves through election day.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that supports Republicans running for the House, has reserved $18.2 million for advertising in the Los Angeles area this fall, with a focus on the 27th District.
The House Majority PAC, which backs Democrats, has booked more than $22.4 million in television and digital ads in both English and Spanish in the Los Angeles media market, one of the country’s most expensive.
The House Majority PAC said last year that it would spend $35 million in California, roughly triple what it spent on the 2022 midterm campaigns in the Golden State, when Democrats underperformed in some districts that had been expected to be strongholds.
The new advertisement from Garcia’s campaign leans into his military credentials. The congressman, a former Navy fighter pilot, flew in more than 30 combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom before spending 11 years as an executive with defense contractor Raytheon.
“While I’m no longer in the cockpit, my fight for you and the country never stops,” he says in the ad, wearing a brown leather flight jacket.
Constituents chime in to say that his “new mission” includes lowering prescription drug costs and “fighting the career politicians” to lower costs for families. The ad does not specify which costs.
The new ad for Whitesides says he created more than 700 jobs in the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita while leading Virgin Galactic.
Those jobs included positions for engineers, technicians, accountants, human relations professionals and others, with a focus on early-career development for recent high school and community college graduates, Whitesides said in an interview this week.
Whitesides, a first-time candidate, said his first ad focuses on job creation because so many of the district’s residents endure long commutes to work in Los Angeles while living in the Antelope Valley, where housing is more affordable.
“People are hungry for local job opportunities so they don’t have to spend four hours on the road,” Whitesides said.
In the ad, Whitesides also says people are struggling with crime and that he will “get more funding for police.”
Whitesides has come out in favor of Proposition 36, a statewide ballot measure that calls for stiffer penalties for some drug and theft crimes.
The measure, called the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, asks voters to partially unwind Proposition 47, a controversial ballot initiative passed in 2014 that reclassified some nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.
Proposition 36 has been endorsed by the California Republican Party.
Democrats are split on the measure. It has been endorsed by some big-city mayors, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. But Gov. Gavin Newsom and some top Democratic leaders in the state Legislature have spoken out against it, alleging it would return California to a draconian tough-on-crime era that swelled the state’s prison population to unconstitutional levels.
Whitesides said he’s “one of the few Democrats who have come out in favor of the reform measure” because residents want to get smash-and-grab robberies under control and are “rightly concerned about public safety.”
In his town hall meeting last month, Garcia said he, too, supported more funding for law enforcement. He said Proposition 47 needed to be nixed and that state Democrats had been pushing too many “pro-criminal” policies.
Times staff writer Noah Bierman contributed to this report.
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