Sherrod Brown Lashes Howard Schultz As A 'Total Idiot' For Possible Presidential Bid

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) ripped former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz as a “total idiot” for considering a race for the presidency as an independent.

Brown is the latest politician to pile on the controversial billionaire for looming as a “spoiler” threat to any Democratic presidential candidate — possibly including Brown.

“You got this idiot Schultz running — maybe,” Brown replied to a voter in Iowa’s Dallas County after a farmers’ roundtable Friday, CNN reported. “He’s an idiot. I mean, he’s a total idiot.”

Brown hasn’t committed to a race for the presidency. But he’s in Iowa on the first leg of his “Dignity of Work” tour, with later stops in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, all early primary states.

Asked if he would accept PAC money if he decided to run, Brown replied: “Probably not, but I haven’t decided yet.”

Schultz, who considers himself a “lifelong Democrat,” revealed in an interview on “60 Minutes” last Sunday that he was seriously considering running for president as a “centrist independent.”

Most of his attacks since then have been on Democrats. He criticized Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who has declared her 2020 presidential bid, for her Medicare for all plan, which he characterized as un-American. He also claimed that no one supports a plan by likely presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to boost taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Warren, in turn, has criticized Schultz for thinking that he can “buy the presidency.”

Former New York Major Michael Bloomberg — who has been a Republican and an independent and has considered running for the presidency as a Democrat — warned that an independent candidate in 2020 would likely “split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president.”