VANDALIA, Ohio—Amid the whipping wind that wreaked havoc on the teleprompters in front of him, former President Donald Trump praised businessman Bernie Moreno as a “hero” and a “winner” at a rally on March 16 days before the Republican U.S. Senate primary.
On March 19, the Trump-backed Moreno will vie for the GOP nomination against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan will vie for their party’s nomination.
The winner will face longtime Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in the general election.
Mr. Brown, 71, is unopposed in the Democrat primary. He was first elected to the Senate in 2007 and has kept his seat in a deep red state.
The March 16 rally was hosted by Buckeye Values PAC, an organization backing Mr. Moreno’s campaign.
“Ohio needs to defeat your horrendous radical left, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who pretends he’s my best friend. He pretends he’s my best friend, then he goes radical left all the time,” President Trump said at the rally, which was held at an airfield near the Dayton International Airport.
“If you listen to his commercials, he sounds like he’s running with Trump. He’s not. He’s not with me,” he added.
Before President Trump’s jet arrived, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) stepped to the podium and urged the crowd to vote for Mr. Moreno.
When Mr. Moreno spoke, he lauded President Trump as a “great American” and said, “I am so sick and tired of Republicans that say, ‘I support President Trump’s policies but I don’t like the man.”
“This is a good man. This is a great American,” Mr. Moreno added, flanked by President Trump. “This man wakes up every day fighting for us fighting for this country. He loves this country like no other leader of this nation has ever loved this country.”
President Trump called Mr. Moreno “a political outsider who’s spent his entire life building up Ohio communities.”
“He’s highly respected all over the country, and he’s going to be a warrior in Washington. Bernie’s strong borders. He'll fight to crush the cartels that are flooding our towns and cities with fentanyl and deadly drugs,” Mr. Trump continued.
For Mr. Moreno to compete against Mr. Brown in the general election, he must overcome a late surge by Mr. Dolan, who led the race by two points in one recent poll.
Mr. Dolan is a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians. He recently received endorsements from Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) who are considered RINOs (Republican in name only) by many conservative Ohio elected officials and voters.
“Bernie is running against a weak RINO named Matt Dolan. He is trying to become the next Mitt Romney. I think Mitt Romney is his hero,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Utah Republican senator and 2012 Republican presidential nominee who is an outspoken critic of President Trump.
At the rally, President Trump chastised the Dolan family for changing the name of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians in 2021 amid concerns that the longstanding name was offensive to Native Americans.
Larry Dolan, Mr. Dolan’s father, is the team’s principal owner. Paul Dolan, Mr. Dolan’s brother, serves as CEO. Mr. Dolan has worked closely with the team over the years.
“He’s easily pushed around by woke left-wing lunatics who renamed his family’s baseball team. My attitude is anybody who changes the name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians should not be a senator,” said President Trump, who surveyed the crowd about their preference for the franchise’s name. The “Indians” elicited rousing applause.
President Trump dismissed allegations against Mr. Moreno that surfaced when an Associated Press report indicated that a person with access to Mr. Moreno’s work email account created a profile on Adult Friend Finder, an adult website, seeking “men for 1-on-1 sex.”
Mr. Moreno’s attorney, Charles Harder, said that a former intern established the account. In a statement provided by Mr. Harder, the intern, Dan Ricci wrote that he created “the account in question” as a “prank” and apologized to Mr. Moreno and his family “for any harm this foolishness has caused them.”
“The email address in question was not Bernie’s personal email address, but rather an email address that appeared on company websites and literature and was managed by staff,” Mr. Harder said in a statement.
“Multiple people had access to it, including this intern. Bernie Moreno had nothing to do with the AFF account. According to metadata, the AFF account was never even used—there were no communications or contacts sent to or from any other AFF accounts, and no photos or content were uploaded to it. The AFF account existed for less than a half-day, 16 years ago,” he added.
On March 16, Adult Friend Finder founder Andrew Conru wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he reviewed all of the available information “and it showed that the account had only a single visit, no activity, no profile photo, consistent with a prank or someone just checking out the site.”
Mr. Conru noted that “the AP report seeming to claim that the available data proves the account was created in Florida is inaccurate, as location information is manually entered during the signup process.”
Even temporary access to an email account “is sufficient enough to create a fake dating profile in someone else’s name,” Mr. Conru added before offering his “sincere apologies to Bernie and anyone similarly affected by the 2016 data incident.”
President Trump compared the attack to what he has faced over the years, including the current criminal indictments.
“He’s getting some very tough Democrat fake treatment right now. And we’re not going to stand for it because I know this man. We all know this man. He’s a hero, he’s a winner. And we’re not going to let these people — these people are sick,” President Trump said.
Much of President Trump’s address at the rally was devoted to the border security crisis.
“The fastest way to reverse every single Biden disaster is to very simply just put me back in office,” he added.
Mr. Moreno’s family immigrated to the United States from Colombia when he was 5. He has used his story of legally arriving in the country and his Latino heritage to combat attacks from the far left.At the rally, Mr. Moreno incorporated the border crisis into his criticism of Mr. Dolan. He noted that his opponent was endorsed by the left-leaning Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“Is that embarrassing? Could you imagine being endorsed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer? Yikes,” Mr. Moreno said. “He says to them, ‘We have to stop being distracted by the problems on our border to fulfill our obligation to Ukraine.’ This flag on my lapel pin says that I have an obligation to America.”
