Rep. Byron Donalds Sunday slammed a television host who claimed former President Donald Trump was using him as a "prop" while he campaigned with him in the Bronx last week, saying her comments are "nothing more than crabs in a barrel."
"You can make an argument that MSNBC is using her," the Florida Republican told "Fox News Sunday" about MSNBC's Joy Reid, who last week commented that Donalds is "the one Black guy that Republicans love to roll out as fake proof that Black people, the Blacks, are MAGA ... It's a joke, and just as credible as when they said they were going to make that guy speaker of the House."
"I have a different viewpoint of a way of looking at the world, different politics, and all of a sudden I'm being used?" Donalds asked in response to Reid, who is also Black.
"But I'm going to move on. The rally in the Bronx was amazing. It had a very diverse crowd from the Bronx: Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Black people, white people — all there supporting President Trump."
The people at the rally, he added, have seen the "disaster that is New York City" and the United States "because of the master of disaster, Joe Biden himself. They want Donald Trump back."
Donalds said Trump's support is also growing in several blue areas.
"We are looking at expanding the political map based on previous racial lines," said Donalds. "That is not what President Trump's focus is. His focus is on all of America."
Donalds further praised Trump's policies on immigration Sunday, saying he'll "put back the policies that had our country secure."
"We are going to deport millions of people. It needs to be done," he said, adding that Congress will move legislation that "gives the president more security to secure the nation."
Meanwhile, Donalds acknowledged that he was skeptical of Trump in the past, but that he changed his mind once he watched Trump's 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.
"Thank God he beat Hilary Clinton," he said. "The country was better off for it.
"Myself, like so many Americans, have seen Donald Trump be president ... [and] want to go back to the years of 2017, 2018, 2019, when our country was significantly better on every metric. Joe Biden and the crazy left will bring up COVID-19, but COVID would have been terrible for any president. Donald Trump still did a great job getting us through COVID."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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