Independent Nebraska U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn all but confirmed leaked audio in which he appears to say Trump supporters' lives "suck so f---ing bad", and a second recording suggests he deliberately hid his positions on immigration and social issues to win Republican votes.
Osborn addressed the audio on CNN's "Inside Politics with Dana Bash" on Wednesday after the Omaha World-Herald published the recording. Asked whether the voice on the tape was his, Osborn did not deny it.
"It sure sounds like me," he told Bash. He added that the remarks sounded "out of character" but conceded he could not remember the context of the conversation.
In the leaked audio, the speaker, whom Osborn appeared to confirm was himself, painted a vivid and dismissive picture of a Trump supporter in the small Nebraska town of Red Cloud. Fox News Digital reported the full remarks:
"Billy Bob in f---ing Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next door to the f---ing Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the Trump flag... all he knows is he's like on the winning team."
The recording continued with Osborn describing how Trump had won over rural voters:
"He's been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them, 'Look, we're winning. You're on the winning team.' And that's all they care about because their lives probably suck so f---ing bad."
Red Cloud sits in south-central Nebraska, a farming community of roughly 1,000 people, exactly the kind of small town whose residents Osborn needs if he hopes to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts. Instead, the audio captures him reducing those voters to caricatures defined by flags and misery.
On CNN, Osborn tried to reframe the comments as empathy rather than contempt. He told Bash he had spoken to "a tremendous amount of people" and insisted the conversation was about voters who feel "disenfranchised" and "pissed off" at the political system.
"I've always lived by the golden rule, treat others like you want to be treated, and if somebody was offended by this, certainly I would apologize to those people that might be offended, but I got to tell them I feel their pain. I absolutely feel the pain. We're all angry right now, and sometimes when you're angry you say some things."
The apology was conditional, aimed at people who "might be offended", and immediately pivoted to a claim of shared frustration. Osborn then tried to align himself with the very voters the audio mocked, saying Trump "captured people who are angry about the political system" and "ran outside of that as an outsider."
"That's what people like about Trump. It's why I'm running again as an independent running outside the political system because I'm tired of the two-party doom loop."
The comparison is hard to square with the recording. On tape, Osborn did not describe angry voters looking for change. He described people too miserable to know better.
The Omaha World-Herald recording was not the first time Osborn's private remarks surfaced. Fox News Digital reported it had obtained a separate, earlier audio clip in which Osborn laid out a blunt electoral calculus to someone he addressed as "Jane."
Nebraska's voter registration, Osborn said on that recording, breaks down to roughly 50 percent Republican, 26 percent Democrat, and 24 percent independent. He estimated he would need 10 to 15 percent of Republicans to win.
Then he explained how he planned to get them:
"How am I going to do that by f---ing saying, 'Oh, I love trans people, and they should be able to play in sports?' F--- no, Jane, that's not how I win. I win by s---ing on the party."
And he went further, acknowledging he was being watched:
"I have people recording me, so I can't say I want to abolish ICE. I can't say those words. I'll be f---ed."
Those two sentences are worth reading twice. Osborn did not say he disagrees with abolishing ICE, the federal agency that enforces immigration law. He said he "can't say" it because the political cost would sink him. The distinction matters. A candidate who holds a position but hides it from voters is not running as an outsider. He is running a con.
Fox News Digital reported in May that Osborn's campaign has been predominantly funded by left-wing donors and activist organizations, including ActBlue, the online fundraising platform used almost exclusively by Democratic candidates and progressive causes. Osborn has also predominantly supported Democrats' campaigns, according to Fox News Digital's reporting.
That funding trail lines up neatly with the strategy Osborn described on tape: court Republican voters with an independent brand while privately dismissing their values and concealing positions, on transgender athletes in women's sports, on abolishing ICE, that would alienate them.
Sen. Pete Ricketts, the Republican incumbent Osborn is challenging, responded directly to the audio in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"I've been to Red Cloud. I've been to every corner of Nebraska. The people Dan Osborn is mocking are the hardest-working people in America. They don't need a candidate who looks down on them. They need a senator who fights for them. That's what I do every day."
Fox News Digital also reached out to Osborn's campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Osborn's entire candidacy rests on the claim that he is something different, not a Republican, not a Democrat, just an independent Nebraskan fed up with the system. The leaked recordings undercut that pitch at every turn. In one, he ridicules the rural voters he needs. In another, he admits to hiding his actual positions on immigration enforcement and transgender policy because saying them out loud would cost him the race.
Several questions remain unanswered. Who recorded the audio published by the Omaha World-Herald, and when was it captured? Who is "Jane," the person Osborn addressed in the earlier Fox News Digital recording? And does Osborn, in fact, support abolishing ICE, or was that line just loose talk too?
Osborn has not answered those questions. His CNN appearance amounted to a shrug, "it sure sounds like me", followed by a pivot to talking points about anger and outsider politics.
Nebraska voters now have two recordings and a conditional apology. What they do not have is a straight answer about what Dan Osborn actually believes, or why he thought they were too beaten down to notice the difference.
