Exposed: Trump-loving GOP candidate's anti-Trump tweets come back to haunt him

Ohio Republican candidate Bernie Moreno has changed his tune on a lot of topics since trying to get elected to the U.S. Senate.

The wealthy Cleveland auto dealer ran for Senate in 2022 but lost in the GOP primary. Now he's running again for 2024 – and is desperately selling himself as a big fan of former President Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, his anti-Trump past has failed to be cast off.

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The Daily Beast obtained screenshots of since-deleted tweets calling Jan. 6 rioters "morons" and blaming Donald Trump for the violence – despite him now he defending them and justifying the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"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,'" the Beast reported.

"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 capitol 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," The Beast added. “'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.'"

Now that he's vying for Trump's endorsement, Moreno has shared posts from right-wing accounts condemning the Department of Justice for prosecuting the former president's supporters who went inside the Capitol for "two minutes," and defended them as "political prisoners."

This isn't the first time Moreno's social media history came back to haunt him.

When he first launched his latest campaign in May, the Daily Mail reported on deleted tweets from 2015 and 2016 comparing Trump's first run for president to “a car accident that makes you sick,” but his tweeted views on the 2020 election and Jan. 6 had not been reported until The Daily Beast obtained screenshots -- and found that his still-public liked tweets supported those views.

A spokesman for Moreno told The Daily Beast the GOP candidate believes Jan. 6 "unfortunately devolved into a riot, [but] 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,” added spokesman Conor McGuinness. “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."