MILWAUKEE- Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Mandela Barnes says a video that surfaced on Sunday in which he can be heard calling the founding of America ‘awful’ was taken out of context.
“Things were bad, things were terrible,” Barnes can be heard saying. “The founding of this nation was awful but we are here now and we should commit ourselves to doing everything we can do to repair the harm because it still exists today.”
Barnes categorized his comments as a rebuke of slavery and the resilience of the country, during an appearance with WTMJ’s Steve Scaffidi Wednesday morning.
“We should be proud of where we’ve come from and the hard work that it took to get us to this point and that means remembering how we got here and talking about it openly,” Barnes said. “This is a 30-second clip that was edited and within the entire context I’m telling you this is a story about the resilience and forward thinking of this country.”
Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to ratify the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote and the first state to declare the fugitive slave act unconstitutional, “and we should talk about those things, we should be proud of that,” Barnes said.
Barnes’ ‘awful’ comments made national headlines. In a statement to Fox News, a spokesperson for the Barnes campaign said, “Painting the Lt. Governor’s comment as anything other than a condemnation of slavery is a sad GOP attempt to distract from Ron Johnson trying to literally overthrow the government of this country and strip reproductive rights from millions of Americans.”
Barnes is one of eight candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for Senate. The field also includes State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, Alex Lasry, Tom Nelson, Kou Lee, Steven Olikara, Peter Peckarsky ,& Darrell Williams. The winner of the August 9th primary will take on incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson.