Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) suggested that Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era, while speaking at a campaign event for former President Trump.
Donalds, who is on the shortlist for Trump’s potential vice-presidential pick, was campaigning for the former president in Philadelphia at a “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” event aimed at garnering Black male voters, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
During the conversation, the first-term lawmaker said he is starting to see the “reinvigoration” of Black families, adding that it is “helping to breathe the revival of a Black middle class in America.” Donalds also claimed that the nuclear family — or one with a mother, father and children living under the same roof — and its values have been eroded by Democrats and lost among Black voters after they supported the party following the Civil Rights Movement, the outlet reported.
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more people voted conservatively,” Donalds said.
The Hill has reached out to Donalds’s office for clarification on his statement.
The Inquirer also noted that the event attendees were majority Black, but about half of those who listed addresses on the event sign-in sheet put down addresses outside of Philadelphia.
The Biden campaign has slammed Trump’s effort to mobilize Black voters.
“Donald Trump spent his adult life, and then his presidency undermining the progress Black communities fought so hard for — so it actually tracks that his campaign’s ‘Black outreach’ is going to a white neighborhood and promising to take America back to Jim Crow,” Biden-Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika wrote in a statement.
Chitika said Trump and his campaign are showing Black voters that they will take away freedom and economic opportunities.
“From touting his mugshot to hawking fake sneakers, Trump and his campaign have shown Black Americans how little they think of us,” she said, adding, “Black voters are about to show Trump how little they think of him, his allies, and his racist agenda this November.”
NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson asked Donalds in a post on social platform X whether he would be a member of Congress under the Jim Crow era.
“@ByronDonalds Do you think you would hold your current position under Jim Crow? Asking for the rest of Black America,” Johnson said.
During a speech on the House floor, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also criticized the Florida Republican for his “factually inaccurate statement.”
“That’s an outlandish, outrageous and out of pocket observation,” Jeffries said.
The Democratic leader argued that the Black community was not better off during a time when they could be lynched, “brutally murdered,” sexually assaulted, denied an education or the right to vote without consequences.
“How dare you make such an ignorant observation,” he said. “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”
Marcus W. Robinson, a senior spokesperson for the Democratic National Convention, slammed Donalds for his statement.
“This is Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican Party: VP contender Byron Donalds is praising Jim Crow, suggesting that Black families were better off during segregation,” Robinson said. “Let’s be clear: Jim Crow ripped apart Black families, and it’s absurd to suggest it was anything but a horrific stain on our country’s history.”
Updated 1:45 p.m. ET.