Russell Brand is among the celebrities at the Republican National Convention (RNC) this week.
Brand, a former Hollywood actor, made an anti-COVID pivot in 2020 and became a popular conspiratorial streamer on the right.
But the controversial British actor is no favorite of former President Donald Trump—at least, according to his old tweets.
The now-official Republican nominee first tweeted about Brand in December 2011, writing: “I like Russell Brand, but Katy Perry made a big mistake when she married him. Let’s see if I’m right—I hope not.”
Brand filed for divorce the day after Trump’s tweet.
Trump did not bring up Brand’s name on Twitter for nearly three years, but by 2014, it seems his opinion had only soured.
“I watched Russell Brand on the Jimmy Fallon show the other night—what the hell do people see in Russell—a major loser!” he wrote. (Brand had actually appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, not Fallon.)
Trump continued to criticize Perry’s choice of marrying Brand in a series of three other tweets posted the same day, saying she “must have been drunk when she married” Brand and asking “what the hell” she was thinking since he’s “a guy who has got nothing going, a waste!”
“.@katyperry I watched Russell Brand and I think his mind is fried – he looks really bad. Russell is a total joke, a dummy who is lost!” Trump said in the third post.
The next day, Trump doubled down on his determination that Brand is a loser in an Instagram video addressed to Perry.
Trump’s negative opinion of Brand predates the actor’s turn toward the GOP.
Brand, for his part, readily engaged in the Twitter feud, asking at one point “are you drunk when you write these tweets? Or does that foam you spray on your bald head make you high?” and quipping in another post that he doesn’t “think your daddy left you any witty ripostes, and everything you have you inherited.”
Since the 2014 feud, Trump has not publicly backtracked his comments about Brand. But Brand surely has pivoted.
In June, Brand proclaimed: “In a straight choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, if you care about democracy, if you care about freedom, I don’t know how you could do anything other than vote for Donald Trump for precisely the reasons that they claim that you can’t.”
Brand being welcomed at the RNC comes after he faced sexual assault allegations from five different women, one of whom said that the pair began a relationship that included abuse and sexual assault when she was 16 years old and Brand was 30.
Brand has denied the accusations and says he found Christianity during the scandal, describing his recent baptism as a life-changing experience.
The accusations against Brand left the internet splintered, with right-wing commentator Candace Owens among those deeming the allegations credible and Elon Musk wholeheartedly standing with Brand.
Brand is not a speaker at the GOP Convention, but is in attendance to speak with prominent Republican figures for his Rumble show. Guests so far have included Vivek Ramaswamy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Eric Trump.
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