Ruthless Podcast hosts revealed a 1971 letter by Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown arguing against the release of American Vietnam War POWs.
Hosts on the Ruthless podcast surfaced a decades-old letter to the editor in which Brown, now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio, questioned what would stop U.S. bombing if North Vietnam freed captured American troops. The letter ran in the News-Journal in the summer of 1971.
Fox News reported the podcast discussion as Brown seeks a return to the Senate in a race rated a toss-up against incumbent Sen. Jon Husted. Fox News Digital sought comment from the Brown campaign and received none.
In the letter, Brown asked whether, if the North Vietnamese "released our POWs, what would stop the U.S. from bombing Hanoi and Haiphong?" Podcast hosts framed that question as an argument against bringing the prisoners home.
"There's incredible footage I invite everyone to go see, of when President Nixon brought these POWs home," Comfortably Smug said. "You hear stories of what it meant to those families to get their loved ones back who were being tortured. You have this guy who is currently running for Senate in this day and age who wrote, he hopes American POWs do not return from being tortured. How is he on the ballot?"
Comfortably Smug, a co-host and noted admirer of President Richard Nixon, pointed to footage of Nixon meeting the returned prisoners and the relief it brought their families. He cast Brown's old letter as out of step with that moment and with voters now.
Co-host Michael Duncan linked the letter to what he called a deeper problem inside today's Democratic Party and argued Brown has carried the same politics for decades.
"When you think of this disease that’s infected the Democratic Party, you think about [Michigan Democratic Senate Nominee Abdul] El Sayed," Duncan said. "You think of [New York Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila] Chevalier, who said she's basically against Western civilization. But Sherrod Brown's been on this his entire career."
John Ashbrook, another co-host and a Cincinnati native, said Ohio voters and political watchers have long heard Brown dismissed as just another left-winger without much detail. He said the 1970s letter fills in that picture.
"If you live in the state of Ohio, or you're a political junkie like us, you've heard it said over and over again, ‘Oh, Sherrod Brown is a crazy lefty,’" Ashbrook said. "It's sort of dismissed. He's a lefty, and nobody ever fills in the gaps. Well, I think this piece that he wrote in the 70s sort of explains why a lot of people were like maybe he is sort of sympathetic to the communists."
Brown first ran for office more than 50 years ago. He later served three terms in the U.S. Senate representing Ohio from 2007 to 2025 and is again the Democratic Senate nominee. Democrats see the Ohio race as a pickup chance while Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate edge.
Earlier writings also drew attention. A 2015 BuzzFeed report described teenage Brown claiming the Nixon administration was turning the country into a "fascist police-state." The Ruthless hosts treated the POW letter as part of that same long record rather than a one-off line from youth.
The letter itself is a primary document from summer 1971, published as a letter to the editor. The full surrounding text was not laid out beyond the key question about releasing POWs and continued bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. The hosts' reading is that Brown argued against freeing the Americans then held and tortured.
Brown's campaign has not answered the Fox News Digital inquiry about the letter. No on-record defense or clarification from the campaign appears in the coverage.
Ruthless has covered the midterms heavily and interviewed candidates across 19 states. In this case the hosts used a local Ohio paper's old pages to test the biography of a familiar statewide figure still asking for another term.
American POWs came home under Nixon after years of captivity. Families celebrated that return. A 1971 letter from a future senator framing release as a risk to U.S. bombing plans sits hard against that history, and against any campaign that prefers nostalgia over the paper trail.
Ohio voters can read the words for themselves. A man who once treated freed American prisoners as a strategic problem now wants their neighbors' trust again. That choice belongs on the table, not in the archives.
