Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) recently hit back at comments from MSNBC host Joy Reid after she suggested that he was “the one black guy” that Republicans tout as a prop. Donalds expressed his vehement disagreement with Reid’s comments.
Rep. Donalds recently spoke at former President Donald Trump’s rally in the Bronx, which drew thousands of diverse supporters from the deep blue city. The Florida Republican’s speech at the event prompted Reid to speak out against Donalds.
“The one Black guy that Republicans love to roll out as fake proof that Black people, the Blacks, are MAGA, they’re MAGA,” Reid said last week. “It’s a joke, and just as credible as when they said they were going to make that guy Speaker of the House.”
You can see that moment here:
During a subsequent appearance on Fox News over the weekend, Donalds addressed the criticism from Reid, claiming it was nothing more than an attempt to thwart his success. He blasted the idea that, just because he appears different than many of his Republican associates, it means he is being used.
“I find Joy’s comments to be nothing more than crabs in a barrel,” Donalds said. “Just because I have a different viewpoint, different way of looking at the world, different politics, now, all of a sudden, I’m being used. You can make an argument that MSNBC is using her.”
Reid has previously voiced her disdain for black Republicans, such as Donalds and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), suggesting they are tokens of the GOP. After Donalds received a nomination for House Speaker in 2023, Reid criticized the move as a superficial attempt to make the Republican Party more diverse.
“You had a very diverse crowd, people from the Bronx, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Black people, White people, all there supporting President Trump, because they’ve seen the disaster that is New York City,” Donalds further stated. “They’ve seen the disaster that has come to the United States of America because of the master of disaster, Joe Biden himself, and they want Donald Trump back.” Watch Byron Donalds address Reid’s comments below:
Donalds claimed that while Republicans are attempting to expand the “political map” and be inclusive to all Americans, Democrats wish to “shrink the political map” and keep political affiliation divided by race. “We’re looking at expanding the political map, not shrinking it based upon race or anything else, because that’s what Joy Reid and Joe Biden and the rest of them want to do,” Donalds said. “They want to shrink the political map based upon previous dogma and racial lines…That is not what President Trump’s focus is. His focus is on all of America.”
The American Tribune reported on a recent MSNBC segment that discussed the positive reception of former President Trump from diverse supporters at the massive Bronx rally. The outlet seemed surprised that minority voters didn’t align with Democratic talking points.
“Well, this might sound a little counterintuitive, but I did talk to folks in that crowd, who themselves were immigrants, a lot of folks from the Dominican Republic. A lot of people that I talked to were born and raised in the Bronx for some of them. This is was our first ever Trump event. And when you talk to immigrants that are going to these Trump rallies, they agree with his message on immigration,” said MSNBC correspondent Dasha Burns.
She continued discussing the sentiment toward Trump’s immigration rhetoric, stating, “Their point is look, I did it the right way. I came here illegally, and especially those living in New York right now, the sentiment I’ve heard from a lot of voters was, you know, we have these immigrants right now that the city is taking care of in a way that I’ve never felt taken care of by the city. It was a large crowd and a diverse crowd.”
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Byron_Donalds_(52586417021).jpg
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