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One of the people Vice President Kamala Harris rang last Sunday after President Biden dropped out of the race was her pastor and mentor, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown — who has a history of making incendiary remarks about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and other hot-button topics.
Over the years, Harris, 59, has heaped praise on Brown, 83, a prominent civil rights activist — despite his past controversial comments.
“America, is there anything you did to set up this climate?” he pondered at a memorial service for victims of the 9/11 terror attack that killed nearly 3,000 — just six days afterward, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
“What did you do — either intentionally or unintentionally — in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting?” he continued.
Audience members at the time, including prominent Californians such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) seemed deeply troubled by his remarks.
Pelosi even used her subsequent speech time to hit back at Brown, and bluntly said, “The act of terrorism on Sept. 11 put those people outside the order of civilized behavior, and we will not take responsibility for that.”
Brown is the pastor at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and has known Harris for at least roughly a quarter of a century.
“She said to me, ‘Pastor, I called because I want you to pray for me, [my husband] Doug, this country’ — and finally she said — ‘and the race I am intending to run for president,’” Brown recently revealed to the Sojourners, a Christian publication about their call last week.
“We exchanged pleasantries, I congratulated her because she’ll be a great president, and we had prayer. She was so gracious and thankful that I took the time,” he further recounted.
A source familiar previously told The Post that Harris “spent more than 10 hours Sunday placing calls to over 100 party leaders, Members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, and leaders of advocacy and civil rights organizations.”
Brown is also on the California Reparations Task Force, which was convened in 2020 to study the issue, and he has backed payments to descendants of slaves using money from billionaires.
Back in 2021, Brown vented to the San Francisco Chronicle that, “I know America. America is a racist country.”
The Washington Free Beacon first reported this story.
It is not entirely clear whether Harris was aware of Brown’s past remarks. The Post reached out to the recently rebranded Harris for President campaign for comment.
Despite some of Brown’s inflammatory past comments, Harris has stood with her longtime pastor and periodically lavished praise on him publicly.
He was one of her guests at the 2021 inauguration.
“I just want to, if you don’t mind for a moment, take a moment of personal privilege to talk about Dr. Brown. He has been on this journey with me every step of the way, from when I first thought about running for public office almost two decades ago,” Harris said at the NAACP national convention in 2022
“He has been such a voice of leadership, more leadership, and leadership in our nation. And so I want to thank you, Dr. Brown, for all that you are – all that you are,” she added.
“It is always an honor to spend time with my pastor, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco,” she wrote in an Instagram post with Brown last year.
The Post has reached out to the Third Baptist Church for comment.
Back in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama faced blowback over his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright after some of his old sermons were unearthed including one in which he declared, “Not God bless America, God d— America.”
Obama later denounced Wright’s sermons at the time but refused to condemn him as a person.
Harris is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, with sufficient delegates committed to backing her to become the party standard bearer.
She is now racing against time to vet and select a running mate. Democrats are expected to hold a virtual roll call by Aug. 7 to officially crown their candidate.
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