‘The Man Is Brilliant’: Mandela Barnes Praised Rev. Jeremiah Wright After Speech Accusing Israel of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

Mandela Barnes, the Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate, praised anti-Semitic pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as “brilliant” after attending a speech in which the controversial preacher accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and the United States of committing “war crimes.”

Barnes posted an Instagram photo of himself shaking hands with Wright at a small group dinner in Milwaukee in 2013. “What’s for certain is that the man is brilliant. It was amazing to hear Dr. Jeremiah Wright speak this evening,” Barnes, who was then serving as a state representative, wrote in the caption.

Barnes’s comments could add to perceptions that the lieutenant governor holds radical views that are out of step with state voters. Barnes’s applause for Wright came years after Wright’s former congregant, Barack Obama, famously cut ties with Wright in 2008 due to the preacher’s inflammatory anti-American remarks. Wright went on a public rant blaming “them Jews” for his fallout with Obama. Wright previously compared the United States to al Qaeda and claimed that the U.S. government invented HIV to kill black people.

Video of Wright’s speech at the dinner, which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, included strong condemnations of the United States and Israel.

In his speech, Wright claimed the Palestinians “are undergoing ethnic cleansing as we gather here tonight.”

Wright also appeared to compare the Holocaust to U.S. actions during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling for “justice not just for the perpetrators of the war crimes at Auschwitz and in Germany, but justice also for the war crimes at Abu Ghraib, the secret CIA rendition camps where waterboarding is an everyday, commonplace occurrence.”

Wright added that “war crimes” are being “committed against Gaza and the residents in Guantanamo” by the Israeli and U.S. governments. He described the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended World War II, as “murders.”

While running for lieutenant governor in 2018, Barnes stood by his praise for Wright, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the pastor gave a “good speech that night.” Barnes’s original post about Wright is still on the Senate candidate’s Instagram page.

The Barnes campaign did not respond to a

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