Earlier this summer, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) engaged in a heated exchange with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos about remarks from former President Donald Trump when he attended the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). During the interview, Donalds maintained that the left’s backlash against Trump’s comments is unimportant and divorced from the real issues that Americans care about.
For context, when former President Trump spoke at the NABJ conference earlier in the summer, he had expressed confusion about Harris’ racial identity, whether she was Black or Indian. Defending Trump, Donalds pointed out a headline from the Associated Press which touted Harris as the “first Indian-American US Senator.” However, Stephanopoulos scolded Donalds for “repeating the slur” regarding the confusion toward Harris’ race.
“And you just repeated the slur again. If it doesn’t matter, why do you all keep questioning her identity? She’s always identified as a black woman. She is biracial. She has a Jamaican father and Indian mother. She’s always identified as both. Why are you questioning that?” Stephanopoulos pressed the Florida Republican representative.
“Well, George, first of all, this is something that’s actually a conversation throughout social media right now, there are a lot of people are trying to figure this out, but again, that’s a side issue, not the main issue. The main issue…” Donald retorted before he was aggressively interrupted by Stephanopoulos, who insisted, “One second, you just did it. You just did it again … Why do you insist on questioning her racial identity.”
Donalds proceeded to point out that Trump only briefly talked about Harris’ racial identity, suggesting that the liberal media is blowing the issue out of proportion. The representative highlighted that Trump spent the bulk of his time on stage going after substantive issues regarding Harris, such as her radical left policies stances that Americans should be concerned about.
“George, now that you’re done yelling at me, let me answer. He talked about it on the stage yesterday in Atlanta for what he spent more than 35, 40 minutes going after her record, talking about how radical of a senator that she was. She was the most liberal senator in the United States, in the United States Senate, that is a fact. He talked about the job that she did as Vice President of the United States, a job, I will add, which has been a failure for the American people. I know you guys like to glom on to this that he talks about in jest or in a serious manner for about a minute or so, but what you do not cover is the litany of failures of Kamala Harris,” he said.
Donalds doubled down after being pressed by Stephanopoulos again, “George, I’m gonna tell you again. He brought it up. AP is the one that wrote the headline when she first came in to the United States Senate, didn’t talk about her being black, talked about her being the first Indian American senator. AP brought that up. I mean, George, we could have this conversation for the entire segment.”
He maintained that this is an erroneous issue that Americans are not concerned with. “But none of this matters to the American people. What matters to the American people is, are we going to have the same policies of the Biden Harris administration that has been destructive of the American people, or are we going to have the policies of the Trump administration, which put America first, had low inflation, prosperous Americans, no matter your race, no matter your color, no matter your creed, and a foreign policy that kept America safe, those are the facts that truly matter, because this issue is going to come and go. The lives of the American people, is what’s going to remain, and that’s what matters more than anything else,” he said.
