Donald Trump’s campaign has replaced an Ohio official who was forced to resign over a racism controversy with a woman who has previously said she was “offended as an African American” by the Republican candidate and confessed she had “bashed the crap out” out of him in the past.

Tracey Winbush is also on record stating Trump had “denigrated the Republican party”.

The Trump campaign announced it had appointed Winbush as its new chair in Mahoning, a crucial Ohio county, on Thursday, shortly after the previous chair resigned over comments she made about racism in a Guardian interview.

Kathy Miller said in the interview that there was no racism in America until the election of Barack Obama and claimed black people who have not succeeded over the past half-century only have themselves to blame.

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” Miller said.



“You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”

Miller resigned shortly after the release of the taped interview, which was part of film in a series of election videos, Anywhere but Washington.

However, within hours of Winbush being named as her replacement, it emerged that she fiercely opposed Trump before his nomination for the White House.

An Ohio reporter also claimed to have obtained evidence that Winbush had begun deleting previous tweets. Her timeline suggested she had used a piece of software to suddenly delete over 17,000 past tweets. One included a link to a news story that had described Trump as “a racist, sexist, demagogue”. Another shared news story described Trump as a ‘Godless Man.’

A YouTube clip from an Ohio GOP meeting in April showed Winbush telling fellow Republicans that she and a colleague had been “offended as African Americans” by some of Trump’s comments and tactics.



“For those of you who know, I have a radio show and I have bashed the crap out of Trump for the last five months, six months, nine months,” she said. “And my listeners are going to kill me if I say anything positive about him.”

Late on Thursday, Winbush said in a statement that she was “proud to take a leadership role in Mr Trump’s campaign”.

“Although I supported another candidate in the primary I am 100% behind Mr Trump,” she continued. “Hillary Clinton would represent a third Obama term and I look forward to electing Mr Trump and doing my part to Make America Great Again.”

Episode descriptions of Winbush’s shows often feature Trump. “Donald Trump lies about the endorsement of David Duke and White supremacist groups like KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood,” reads one, from February 2016, which continues, “His response on the Sunday Morning talk shows was deplorable and his statement this morning on NBC was even worse. He thinks the American people are stupid and especially me, cause I listen very well and can hear.” Another, from March, reads: “KKK endorsements are not what the Republican party nbeeds [sic]. Racism is always a downer except if you’re Trump I guess.”



At the April GOP meeting she continued: “There are those of you in here who are supporting a man, at the top of the ticket, who has denigrated the Republican party like I’ve never seen before.”



Winbush suggested in the GOP meeting that she had previously said she “could never support a candidate because of the way he has handled himself.”

In another video from the same event, Winbush told a reporter: “I don’t like Trump,” she said. “I don’t like Hillary more.”

Appearing to wrestle with her conscience, she said that fellow Republicans may need to rally around a candidate they do not like in order to “support the person that you want to support at the top of the ticket, even if we don’t condone how they’re acting”.

“The ticket is already set, and we cannot go back to the primary to erase it.”

She added: “This has been an ugly year, and I don’t see it getting any prettier.”