Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel joined Fox & Friends on Wednesday to discuss the off the rails debate he and Democrat Morgan Harper had on Monday.

The debate between Mandel and Harper took place in a Black Church in Cleveland, Harper’s choice, and after trading barbs and Mandel calling Harper “like AOC only dumber,” the audience got involved.

“You ain’t coming in the Black community. Put ’em out,” an audience member interrupted after the moderating asked Mandel about previous comments in which he called Black Lives Matter activists “thugs.”

“Hey, hey, we’re not doing that,” the moderator added, trying to shut down the exchange.

“You mean like put him out with a, with a bullet? What do you mean put him out?” Mandel demanded to know, engaging with the audience member.

“No, no, no, Mr. Mandel. Mr. Mandel. Mr. Mandel,” the moderator jumped in, trying to get the debate to focus between the candidates.

“Ask him to leave. He don’t belong in the Black community,” the audience member clarified. “I thought this was America where we debate freely,” Mandel replied.

“Hey sister, listen to me. Don’t do that… This is America. He can be here. Don’t do that. Don’t embarrass me,” the moderator said

“I’m not embarrassing you. But to bring that White man in the Black community like that, I’m finished,” the audience member added. “Don’t you suck up to him.”

Fox’s Pete Hegseth played Mandel a clip of the exchange and asked for his response.

Mandel replied, “She didn’t like that I was there. She didn’t like that I was White in a Black church. And she didn’t like what I was saying and what I told her was, you know, when I was in the Marine Corps. I did a couple of tours in Iraq and I put my life in the hands of young Black men.”

“And they put their lives in my hands,” Mandel continued, parroting the response he gave at the debate. “And we didn’t see each other as Black or White or Hispanic or Asian. We saw each other as brothers as United States Marines and frankly, I think that’s the way that society should be as well. I’m sick and tired and, Pete, I know your viewers are sick and tired too, the Democrat party and the left is making everything about race that’s what this lady tried to do at the debate.”

Hegseth quickly agreed and asked Mandel to discuss the broader “dynamics of the debate.”

Mandel explained that the debate stemmed from a challenge by Harper and that she choose the venue. He doubled down on the racial element of his reception, saying:

You had other radical leftists there who kept interrupting me and basically asking me to leave because I was a White guy in a Black church. Horrible, after everything Martin Luther King marched against. He said let’s judge everyone on the content of one’s character and not the color of one’s skin. The democratic party of today is trying to make everything about skin color.

Watch above, via Fox News

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