Appearing on CNN with anchor Kate Bolduan, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fl.), sounded off on the content of the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying that Harris had lied during the debate and it needs to be called out, managing to obliterate the CNN anchor in the process.
That spat came up a bit into the segment, during a discussion between the two over former President Trump’s rhetoric. Bolduan said, “I think any serious person would also say, Congressman, that Donald Trump is a source of heated and dangerous rhetoric over months and years. I mean even Republicans who support him and are voting for him this election have basically begged him to tone it down.”
She continued, “So, if Republicans who even support you say that you’ve got to probably, you need to tone it down, you’ve got to mayor in Springfield, Ohio, saying, you guys need to tone it down because we now have bomb threats on schools in our area, there’s a problem also, you know, in the general rhetoric of the campaign that for – a term that is never – is often criticized but that – if you want to say both sides should address, but, right, logically?”
Donalds didn’t cower or apologize. Instead, he fought back. Beginning his rebuttal, he said, “Well, actually, let’s – let’s dig into this a little bit more. And thank you for bringing this up.” Continuing, he said, “Yes, we’ve heard from the Springfield mayor. And nobody wants bomb threats or anything like that. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have been talking about reports coming out of Springfield. J.D. Vance represents the state of Ohio. He’s talking about things that his constituents have brought to him.”
He then brought up Kamala’s debate lies, saying, “Well, let’s compare that to the fact that Kamala Harris, in the debate last week, she lied about Donald Trump’s bloodbath comments. Why did she say that? Because she wants to invoke a negative energy around the campaign of Donald Trump, frankly, to affect these undecided voters that we talked about at the top.”
Bolduan jumped in with an interruption and snapped, “There can be a lot of fact -” Donalds, not having it, said, “What does she always talk about, the same -” Bolduan then said, trying to diminish the point about the disparity in fact-checking during the debate, “I mean, Congressman, you and I have gone back and forth a lot about like fact checking that can happen.”
Donalds then noted that there were other lies as well, noting “Hold on – but, Kate, hold on, the same lie about Charlottesville.” He continued, “Hey – hey, Kate – Kate – and you acknowledged that Kamala Harris lied about the Charlottesville comments again. Something that even Snopes has debunked and said his fake news, that it is wrong, that his statements were taken out of context. Those are the direct lies coming from Kamala Harris.”
He then said, “So, if you’re going to talk about the invective put into this campaign that Kamala Harris and her campaign has done, trying to invoke – invoke a negative response from voters in our country versus Donald Trump talking about issues, whether it be in a city or, quite frankly, you could bring up Aurora, Colorado, or you could bring up Denver, Colorado, that have been overwhelmed by illegal immigrants in our country. You can’t compare the two.”
Bolduan, ending it there and trying to move on, insisted that they didn’t need to “walk through” what she characterized as a list of lies on both sides, saying, “There are lots of – Congressman, there are lots of things that can be brought up, which is also, if you’re talking about lies and you’re talking about comparisons, you can talk about a long list of lies. We could walk through it. I don’t think it is to the benefit of voters right now for me to walk through to remind them of the lies that Donald Trump has told in the past, case in point, eating dogs and eating dog and pets, or lots of other things.”
Watch their spat here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
"*" indicates required fields