Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took shots at President Donald Trump this weekend in New Hampshire by calling his populism “phony” and saying he’s a “bully.”
Brown’s “Dignity of Work” tour made two stops in New Hampshire over the weekend in a visit to the state with the second earliest primary.
At a Friday round-table event about jobs and the economy, the Ohio senator commented on Trump’s populism when talking to reporters.
“His phony populism is you divide people and you push people down to lift some others up. Real populism is not racist. It’s not anti-Semitic. It doesn’t divide people. It doesn’t do hate speech and real populism is fighting for workers,” Brown told Fox News Friday in Hampton, New Hampshire.
2020 Watch-NOW: Asked if there are already too many progressive populists in the Democratic nomination race, @SherrodBrown -in NH- tells @seacoastonline @foxnewspolitics "I put my record up against anybody for fighting for workers" #NHPolitics #FITN #2020Election pic.twitter.com/rbx5nvnbkB
— Paul Steinhauser (@steinhauserNH1) February 8, 2019
The next day at a bookstore event in Concord, New Hampshire, he called Trump a “bully,” according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I don’t know if we run. I don’t know if we get through the primaries. But I do know if I’m on the stage with him, one thing I’ll always have in my mind is that Donald Trump is a bully and all bullies are cowards.”
This is not the first time Brown has taken shots at Trump. Last week, during a Meet the Press interview, he again called the President a “racist”.
“Well, I think this country hasn’t dealt well with the issues of race. I mean, we have a president who’s a racist,” he said.
We saw how Trump built a political brand questioning Obama’s legitimacy and birthplace.
We know Trump committed housing discrimination.
We see how he is dividing our country and deepening wounds.
Trump is a racist. There is no question about that. https://t.co/h6KXACBolt
— Sherrod Brown (@SherrodBrown) February 4, 2019
Brown is expected to decide on whether to run for president in March. He mentioned during a question-and-answer portion of Friday’s event that he called former President Barack Obama to talk about his presidential hopes.
If he decides to run, he will join a long list of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020.
Brown told a Fox News reporter that he considers himself a “progressive populist” and a person who fights for the “dignity of work.”
“Since my election to the third term in the Senate, I have continually been noticing Democrats seem to think we either chose to talk to the progressive base or you talk to working families and listen to issues that matter to them. I don’t think it’s a choice,” he said during the round table. “I won in states like Ohio because of who I am and what I fight for every day, which is the dignity of work.”
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Battleground State News.
Photo “Sherrod Brown” by Sherrod Brown.
