At first glance, Bernie Moreno looks like just another Republican candidate who is downplaying the shocking attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and pushing for lenient treatment for those who carried it out.
The wealthy Cleveland car dealer, who ran for U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022 and is running again in 2024, has called Jan. 6 defendants “political prisoners,” once said “don’t ever use the word insurrection,” and shared a post from a right-wing Twitter account that condemned the Department of Justice for prosecuting people who were inside the Capitol for “two minutes.”
In an August 2021 interview, Moreno said Jan. 6 was “terrible” and condemned those who committed violence that day. But the aspect of the day that he said “should send chills down your spine” was the treatment of those who stormed the Capitol but were not glaringly violent.
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Moreno raised the case of a “70 year old grandma who walked into the Capitol following what was going on, kind of almost let in, didn’t break one thing” who might be charged with trespassing.
“What’s the fine? I don’t know a hundred bucks, two hundred bucks?” said Moreno. “Six months in jail. No trial date. Solitary confinement.”
Unlike many MAGA politicians, however, Moreno’s hardline Jan. 6 rhetoric came not long after he spent the aftermath of the attack tweeting and liking content that was harshly critical of Trump, those who rioted, and 2020 election denialism more broadly.
In a series of now-deleted tweets—screenshots of which were obtained by The Daily Beast—and liked tweets that remain available on Moreno’s account, the Ohio Senate hopeful sounds like a candidate who is far more eager to land Chris Christie’s endorsement than Donald Trump’s.
In a now-deleted December 2020 tweet, Moreno said it was wrong when Democrats accused Trump of collusion with Russia, “but just as bad for [Trump] to make claims of a fraudulent election without proof. Potentially irreparable harm to US.”
In a tweet sent on the evening of Jan. 6, Moreno tried to distance Republicans from the violence by castigating and insulting the rioters. “The morons who ransacked the capital don’t represent anyone but the mentally unstable,” he said in one reply.
In another Jan. 6 Twitter reply, Moreno referred to the rioters as “criminals” and urged another user to not legitimize them. “This is not how democracy is done,” he said. In another, he dubbed the now-infamous QAnon shaman “an out of work and untalented actor.”
Moreno has since deleted those tweets, likely long before the former president faced criminal prosecution himself for his actions on and before Jan. 6, both in federal court in Washington and in Georgia state court in Atlanta.
Since Moreno launched his first 2022 Senate run, his past anti-Trump statements and social media activity have come under scrutiny. In May, when Moreno launched his 2024 campaign, the Daily Mail reported on now-deleted tweets from 2015 and 2016 in which he compared Trump to “a car accident that makes you sick.”
But Moreno’s attempt to scrub his past expressions of views over the 2020 election and Jan. 6 has not yet been reported. He also has not fully scrubbed them: his record of liked tweets remains publicly available.
On Jan. 6, he liked a tweet from the actor Mark Hamill, who wrote, “the only other person enjoying this chaos & anarchy as much as our defeated president is Vladimir Putin.”
A week after Jan. 6, Moreno liked a post by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who defended former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) as a “principled leader” with “a hell of a lot more backbone than most” after she voted to impeach Trump.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Moreno spokesman Conor McGuinness said that while Moreno “believes that while January 6th unfortunately devolved into a riot, it was not an Insurrection, as the media has ridiculously attempted to claim.”
“He continues to be disgusted with the people who committed violence, but we have since learned a lot more about that day, including about the vile treatment of peaceful protestors who committed no violence, but had the book thrown at them anyway by Biden’s DOJ,” McGuinness continued. “All the while, that same DOJ has in many cases refused to prosecute the people responsible for the BLM riots in the Summer of 2020. Bernie will fight to end Joe Biden’s two tiered Justice System in the United States Senate."
Moreno would hardly be the first Republican politician to walk back or erase their heated criticism of Trump or their expressions of outrage and sadness over Jan. 6. Many seeking to remain in the good graces of the influential former president and his supporters have done just that.
But few have shifted as dramatically on all things Trump as Moreno, who launched his first Senate campaign in April 2021 and quickly rebranded himself as the Trumpiest candidate in a crowded GOP primary in which Trump’s endorsement was seen as key to victory.
He ultimately lost in that primary to now-Sen. J.D. Vance, who won Trump’s endorsement. Now, Moreno is running to defeat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), a top target for Republicans looking to take the Senate majority.
Although Republicans everywhere have rallied around Trump in the face of his criminal indictments, it would be difficult to find a leading candidate anywhere who is more conspicuously angling for the MAGA vote—and Trump’s endorsement—than Moreno.
In the last month, Moreno has called for President Joe Biden’s impeachment, campaigned recently alongside hardcore election denier Kari Lake, and wrote an op-ed saying that any Republican candidate for office should be “disqualified” if they would not support Trump if he were the GOP nominee for president.
“Some people wish Trump’s words were more polished, but the difference between every other politician and Trump is that he gives us full and honest access to all his thoughts—which is preferable to the deception most politicians engage in publicly,” Moreno wrote in The Columbus Dispatch. “At the end of the day, I care more about actions, and Trump’s actions made us stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”
The former president has yet to endorse in the Ohio Senate race, though he has spoken positively of Moreno. Top allies of Trump’s, like Vance, Lake, and former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), have all backed him.
Still, the candidate’s history of criticizing Trump and his supporters’ actions around the 2020 election and Jan. 6 is poised to cast a continued shadow over his effort to own the MAGA lane of the GOP primary in this key race.
Despite his deleting spree, much of Moreno’s broader anti-Trump social media activity is still available to see on Twitter.
In the early days of the 2016 GOP primary, Moreno seemed an outright fan of then-Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), who stayed in the race against Trump longer than any of the other dozen-plus Republicans that year and made a point of fighting against Trumpism to the bitter end.
But Moreno, who now pitches himself as the epitome of America First, liked a 2016 post noting Kasich’s victory over Trump in the Ohio primary—and another from Kasich declaring there was “no way [he] would team up with Donald Trump.”
Moreno liked a tweet in February 2016 from former Ohio Attorney General David Yost stating, “A lifelong conservative, I will not support Donald Trump, even if he is the Republican nominee.”
And that same month, Moreno also liked a tweet from Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) criticizing Trump over his refusal to disavow Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist David Duke in an interview earlier that week.
After the bombshell Access Hollywood tape dropped just before the 2016 election, Moreno liked a series of tweets from top Republicans condemning the candidate’s behavior—and even calling for his withdrawal from the race.
“While I continue to respect those who still support Donald Trump, I can no longer support him,” then-Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) wrote in another tweet liked by Moreno.
Moreno also liked tweets about a surge in Google searches on how to move to Canada as Trump locked up the GOP nomination, one that mocked a Trump campaign logo, and a tweet rooting for more moderate Republicans to beat “Trump-aligned” candidates in 2016.
Before the Trump years, Moreno had also liked a handful of tweets that would almost lead readers to believe he has Democratic sympathies. In 2014, he liked a tweet from Forbes positively reporting on Obamacare, and another about effective Obamacare advertising.
Moreno isn’t the first Republican to go from anti-Trump to Trump fan.
Moreno’s spokesman, McGuinness, acknowledged that record but cast it in the broader context of the GOP’s shift toward Trump.
“It’s no secret that Bernie, like many others, was initially skeptical of President Trump, but he has been a strong supporter of President Trump for many years now and was proud to be the first candidate running for US Senate in Ohio to endorse him in the 2024 election,” he said.
Indeed, after a grueling 2016 primary, many of Trump’s former foes came to his corner. And as Trump is running again for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024—and leading the field, no less—many Republicans are once again preparing to bite their tongues on Trump in exchange for potentially ousting Biden.
But for the purposes of the Ohio GOP primary, Trump’s endorsement still matters. Moreno is heavily angling for it, but he is not the only one. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, once considered a mainstream Republican, has also positioned himself as an “America First” conservative in the race—and won Trump’s endorsement for Secretary of State just last year.
Despite his pivot, LaRose is still not fully trusted by the Republican base, and no prominent MAGA movement figures have yet endorsed his campaign.
Like Moreno, LaRose has made statements critical of Trump, dating back to the 2016 election. Earlier this year, a leaked recording of LaRose, reported by Politico, caught him arguing that Trump’s endorsement is not as impactful as it once was.
State Sen. Matt Dolan (R-OH), whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, has been a vocal critic of Trump. In last year’s GOP primary, Dolan notched nearly a quarter of the vote, a surprisingly strong showing for a distinctly non-MAGA candidate.
Meanwhile, Moreno himself has already endorsed Trump’s latest bid for the White House. In February, the Senate hopeful tweeted miraculous praise for the former president, expressing none of the same hesitations he seemed to share with Trump skeptics back in the day.
“We desperately need a strong President with the backbone to stand up to the political establishment in Washington DC, and will always put America First,” Moreno wrote.
“That's why I’m proud to endorse Donald Trump for President in 2024,” he added.
