Wisconsin Democrat Senate Candidate Mandela Barnes Calls Founding of America ‘Awful’

Wisconsin Lt. Governor and current Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes was caught on camera over the Fourth of July holiday weekend saying he believes the founding of America was “awful.”

Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Milwaukee-based talk show host Dan O’Donnell published a short 37-second video on social media showing how Barnes felt about the founding of America and the country’s origins.

He said, “things were bad, things were terrible,” when talking about the nation’s origins.

“The founding of this nation? Awful,” Barnes added, noting that Americans need to “commit” themselves to repairing the “harm” and “damage” done in the past.

He then added that the impact of colonialism and slavery is still felt today, and that “[t]hey’re going to continue to be felt unless we address it, in a meaningful way.”

The Democrat announced his candidacy to unseat Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in the upcoming midterm elections last summer. The Democrat primary on August 9 will determine who will advance to take on Johnson in November. The state will be a crucial battleground state for control of the Senate.

While Barnes grabbed national attention when he became Wisconsin’s first black lieutenant governor in 2018 and pushed for police reform in 2020 after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, any Democrat will face an uphill battle in the general election due to President Joe Biden’s approval numbers.

Biden’s low approval rating is dragging down Democrat candidates all over the country. As of this past weekend, Biden has a 33 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval in the state of Wisconsin and 30 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval nationally, according to a CIVIQS rolling job-approval average on July 3.

In a statement about his remarks, Barnes’ campaign told Fox News that “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.”

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.