Alton Brown, host of Food Network’s “Good Eats,” has faced backlash for comments he’s made in recent days about his decision not to vote Republican in this year’s election as he has in years past.
The Marietta resident and television personality first made headlines this week when he appeared to condemn the Republican Party and its support of President Donald Trump. The cookbook author said although he has voted for Republicans for most of his adult years, he did not see how GOP leaders could support the current administration.
“I have voted Republican most of my life. I consider myself a conservative. I want to believe there are still “very fine” people on both sides of the aisle but...if #GOP leaders don’t get their collective noses out of that man’s (expletive), we’re gonna have words,” Brown wrote in a tweet that has since been deleted.
The response was swift and furious from some of his supporters. He put some of the blame on Newsweek, which he said mistakenly referred to him as a Republican in a headline. In tweets that would follow, he clarified that he voted for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket, and that stating that he has "voted for republicans in the past is not the same as being a republican.”
Newsweek later updated its headline to reflect that Brown is a conservative but doesn’t necessarily vote along party lines. In 2016, The New York Times reported the 58-year-old was a “private, politically conservative Southerner who sometimes carries a Bible and a firearm.”
On Tuesday, after apparently feeling that conservatives were pursuing him in a witch hunt, Brown made comments that he has now apologized for in a tweet. He posed a question to his more than 4.5 million followers that many have said was offensive.
“Do you think the camp uniforms will be striped, like the ones at Auschwitz, or will plaid be in vogue?”
By Wednesday, he had deleted the tweet and apologized for the statements, noting the Holocaust comment was “in poor taste.”
Some applauded his admission, but others stated he should stick to his career in food and entertainment rather than speaking about political happenings.
Some defended his statements.
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