Byron Donalds defends Trump’s remarks on Black voters: ‘This is something similar’
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) defended former President Trump on Sunday against allegations of racism after Trump said Black voters are more likely to back him because of his criminal indictments.
Trump said Friday during an event in South Carolina that Black voters are more likely to support him after his criminal indictments because they too have “been hurt so badly and discriminated against.” The NAACP, Black leaders and the Biden campaign have called the comments racist.
Donalds told Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the point is only “part” of what the former president was saying.
“This is political persecution from the Department of Justice and from radical [district attorneys] throughout our country,” he said of the former president’s four criminal indictments, despite their not being evidence Trump is being targeted for purely political reasons. “This is something similar that Black people have to deal with [in] the justice system themselves.”
The congressman, who is Black, shot back at the Biden campaign for calling out Trump’s comments as racist, saying that the campaign is trying to “play politics.”
He also brushed off the context of the comments themselves, saying Trump was “really just enjoying himself” on the eve of his South Carolina primary victory.
Trump’s four criminal indictments resulted in a total of 91 charges against the former president. The charges include allegations that Trump mishandled classified information after leaving office, attempted to cover up a hush money payment made to a porn star and illegally attempted to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia and on the federal level.
Trump is expected to have his first criminal trial in the hush money case on March 25. He has also been found liable of defamation and fraud in two civil cases out of New York, which resulted in millions of dollars of penalties.
Donalds, a major Trump surrogate, is believed to be among the finalists to be Trump’s vice presidential candidate.
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