Tony Moreno, a retired cop who repeatedly referred to Trump as the “Great” President, called former President Barack Obama a “fake christian” and quoted a QAnon slogan, is running for mayor of Pittsburgh—as a Democrat
According to Pittsburgh City Paper, Moreno’s Twitter feed was filled with praises for Trump, and contempt for Democrats up to July 2019, months before he announced that he was running for mayor as a Democrat.
In July 2019, he quote tweeted Sen. Mitt Romney. He wrote at the time: “The great President Donald J Trump also has a responsibility to protect this country. They want to make it socialist and hate America . They try to impeach him, falsely accuse him and turn against American values. That’s what I would have said. He speaks for me.”
He also referred to Trump as the “Great President” in a February 2019 tweet while opining on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam black face controversy.
“How come there are never old kkk black face photos of the Great President President Donald J Trump or any other prominent GOP member? All day Democrat KKK,” Moreno wrote.
On Christmas day in 2018, he called critics of Donald Trump “vermin”. He wrote, “Thank you Mr. President for speaking for me. Stand up to them. Stare them down. Challenge them. Force them to reveal themselves for the vermin they are.”
In Jan. 13, 2019, Moreno called former President Barack Obama a “Fake Christian.” And months, later, tweeted a slogan associated with the conspiracy theory group QAnon, according to Pittsburgh Action News.
Even though he stopped tweeting his praises for Trump in 2019, he still retweets right wingers like James Woods and Andy Ngo. He also criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci’s coronavirus models in July of last year according to, Pittsburgh City Paper.
Asked about his past comments, Moreno said he does not support Trump. He says he is a lifelong Democrat, and his past tweets were a “backlash response” to what he was seeing happening inside the Democratic Party.
“When you want to say something bombastic, you make it as bombastic as possible,” Moreno told the paper. “I don’t have a MAGA hat or wave a MAGA flag, it was just something that I tweeted out.”
Asked about an August 2019 tweet in which he wrote that he was running as a Republican. Moreno said, “I wrote that wrong. It would be not as a Republican. There’s no way to run as a Republican in the City of Pittsburgh.”
