REV. WRIGHT, THE NEXT GENERATION: Meet Kamala Harris’s spiritual mentor: The radical pastor who suggested America was to blame for 9/11.
The man whose spiritual tutelage the presidential hopeful craves is a civil rights leader tutored by Martin Luther King with a history of controversial comments that are a potential source of embarrassment for Ms Harris as the race nears its conclusion.
Dr [Amos C.] Brown outraged senior Democrats after the 9/11 attacks, when he appeared to blame the US for the terrorist atrocity that claimed the lives of almost 3,000 victims while speaking at a memorial service.
“America, is there anything you did to set up this climate?”, local media reported him asking in September 2001, just days after the two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
“America, America. What did you do – either intentionally or unintentionally – in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting?”
Nancy Pelosi, the California congresswoman, was reported to have been left in tears and pushed back on the remarks when it was her time to speak.
“The act of terrorism on September 11 put those people outside the order of civilised behaviour, and we will not take responsibility for that,” said Ms Pelosi, who would go on to become speaker of the House Representatives.
Two other senior Democrats, the late California senator Dianne Feinstein and former California governor Gray Davis, walked out during his remarks.
Paul Holm, the partner of Mark Bingham, who died while trying to storm the cockpit of a third plane hijacked by terrorists, was overheard saying: “This was supposed to be a memorial service.”
Ms Harris had been associated with Dr Brown for years by this point, having been introduced to him by Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco and her former boyfriend, in the 1990s.
Exit quote: “‘Pastor, I called because I want you to pray for me, Doug [Emhoff], this country,’ she told Amos C Brown, calling him shortly after he finished conducting a service at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church. Joe Biden had just dropped out of the contest after his disastrous debate performance, endorsing Ms Harris as his successor.”