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Karamo Brown Says His Sons Received ‘Death Threats’ After His Sean Spicer Comments

Karamo-Brown-Says-His-Sons-Received-Death-Threats-After-His-Sean-Spicer-Comments
Karamo Brown and Sean SpicerNINA PROMMER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock; AP/Shutterstock

Karamo Brown came under fire last month after he called Sean Spicer a “good guy” amid the controversial casting of the former White House press secretary on Dancing With the Stars, and now he’s revealed how it affected his family.

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The Queer Eye star, 38, opened up to Catt Sadler on the Thursday, September 26, episode of her “Naked” podcast and shared that his sons Jason and Chris began getting “death threats” after his comments.

“He was running home because somebody was in a car chasing after him in the car screaming at him! ‘F you and your dad! You’re going to die!’” Brown recalled of a situation in which one of his children was followed down a street in Philadelphia by people yelling profanity at him. “That’s what I don’t like. That’s the part that really makes me emotional and gets me upset. When I have to squeeze my hands, because the Daddy protective in me is just like, ‘Don’t do that.”

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The reality star added of briefly deactivating his Twitter and disabling Instagram comments on his page: “The hate started coming at me. And normally I can handle the hate, because I’m okay with having constructive conversations, but what I realized is that places like Twitter, you can’t have constructive conversations. It’s the mob mentality. And so once the mob feels like they have their target, they’re going to get you. … And then it was really the first tweet I saw where they @ my child as well, I was like, done! And I got off of it.”

The drama started after it was announced Spicer, 48, was set to compete alongside Brown on the hit ABC series. Twitter users slammed the Real World alum for sharing a tweet about getting to know the political aide before judging him.

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“First, I have no say who is on the cast and didn’t find out till this morning that he is on! But I’ll tell you this… I’m excited to sit down w/ him and engage in a respectful conversations,” Brown wrote at the time. “Only way things get better is if we try to educate those who have different POV than us.”

Though Brown told Sadler, 45, he understands why people didn’t agree with the casting of Spicer, he also doesn’t regret what he said.

“To be honest with you, I understood why people got upset,” he said. “I am not delusional. I’m with them. You know seeing someone lie to the American public and be a part of an administration that is hurting us, it was bad.”

Brown added of his short banter with Spicer: “It was maybe a three-minute interaction. Three minutes and I was like, ‘Oh that was nice.’ I then open up my big mouth which is normal for me. And I get it.”

Spicer, for his part, spoke out to Us Weekly about the backlash earlier this month. ““You go with the flow. I’m going to go out here and have the best time I can,” he told Us at the DWTS premiere taping. “It’s a free country. If you want to support me, great. If not, good. But I’m gonna have a great time… Tom [Bergeron] said he wanted to keep politics out of the show. I hope, um, I hope we do,” the former Republican National Committee communications director told Us on Monday. “I think we share that in common.”

Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.

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