Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., in a tight race while seeking his third term, told Newsmax on Tuesday that his main obstacle to winning in November is that he is battling a combination of the mainstream media covering up the truth and his opponent, Democrat Mandela Barnes, hiding from the voters.
Speaking on "Wake Up America," the Wisconsin Republican said that Barnes, who is the state's lieutenant governor, "is in hiding. He is taking a page out of the Joe Biden playbook ... he is hiding from the Wisconsin people … [and] the media is covering up for a radical leftist that I'm running against," just as they did for Biden.
According to a poll released last week by the Marquette University Law School, Johnson has overcome a 7 percentage-point deficit to Barnes from last month and now leads by 1 percentage point.
Johnson attributed his surge in the polls to the voters in Wisconsin beginning to understand what a "radical leftist" his opponent is — "how he supports defunding the police, abolishing ICE, that he thinks the founding of America was awful, and implies that our national parks are racist, that he wants to stymie capitalism, and believes the wealth of America was not created justly."
Johnson also said Barnes wants to release convicts from prison, including violent ones.
But Johnson said there is still a very difficult race ahead because the media is trying to distract from the issues that matter most to voters.
Johnson said that there is a need to highlight the disastrous results of the Biden administration's policies, which he said have caused all of the current problems: high gas prices, elevated inflation, rising crime and open borders.
But Johnson said that "it is not a level playing field; it's not a fair fight, because we have to get out our message the only way we can by paid advertisement," while his Democratic opponent has the mainstream media on his side.
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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