Rep. Byron Donalds went on the defense after Democratsfrom House Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the Biden campaign seized on remarks he made about the upside of Jim Crow for black families.
Donalds, R-Fla., at a black voter outreach event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, said he is starting to see a 'reinvigoration of the black family' that is 'helping to breathe the revival of a black middle class in America.'
He went on to say that black voters had become loyal to Democrats due to their leadership in civil rights movement but Democratic policies went on to erode their family values.
'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 black people voted conservatively,' Donalds, R-Fla., had said during an event to reach out to black voters on Tuesday.
Rep. Byron Donalds went on the defense after Democrats from House Leader Hakeem Jeffries to the Biden campaign seized on remarks he made about the upside of Jim Crow for black families
Donalds is rumored to be under consideration for Donald Trump's vice president pick.
'And then H.E.W., Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are,' he said, referring to the expansion of the welfare state and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Jeffries, D-N.Y., shot back on the House floor: 'That's an outlandish, outrageous and out of pocket observation.'
'We would not better off when a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered without consequence because of Jim Crow, we were not better off when black women could be assaulted without consequence because of Jim Crow, we were not better off when people could be systematically lynched without consequence because of Jim Crow, ... how dare you make such an ignorant statement. You better check yourself before wreck yourself.'
The Democratic National Committee also immediately condemned the comments.
'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. 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,' said spokesperson Marcus Robinson.
Donalds pushed back on the criticism in a clip posted to X:
[Democrats] are trying to say that I said 'black people were doing better under Jim Crow.' I never said that, they are lying. But why would you be surprised? Because they always lie. This is the same Joe Biden that said, if you don't vote for him, then you ain't black. The man is a liar. Sorry, just call it what it is. What I said was, is that you have more black families under Jim Crow, and it was the policies under H. E. W. under the welfare state, that did help to destroy the black family. That's what I said. And I also said you're seeing a reinvigoration of black families today in America, and that is a good thing.'
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965, ushered in by President John F. Kennedy and signed by President Lyndon Johnson, marked the end of the Jim Crow segregation era.
Around the same time the welfare state was expanded with the creation of Medicare for low-income Americans and the expansion of federal food stamp, welfare, and housing programs.
Donalds and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, were appearing at the opening of a Trump campaign field office in North Philadelphia, which the Inquirer described as being placed in a 'mostly white' neighborhood.
The Biden campaign said the Trump campaign's voter outreach and the mention of Jim Crow was fitting.
'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 said in a statement.
At one point during the event, Donalds and Tafoya discussed the differences between black men and black women's politics, as polls have shown much of Trump's uptick in polling among black voters comes from men.
'First of all, there's a difference between men and women anyway,' Donalds said. 'Men have been created by god to be conquerors, to be hunters. That's who they are. And so a black man in today's America is looking around and saying, 'How can I go hunt for my people and hunt for my family?' … They're looking at what Joe Biden has done and saying, 'I can't hunt! You took my spear. You took my bow.'
The Congressional Black Caucus - which Donalds claims denied him membership - also tore into the Florida Republicans' words and demanded an apology.
'This is a pattern of embracing racist ideologies that we see time and again within the MAGA Republican Party. Rep. Donalds is playing his role as the mouthpiece who will say the quiet parts out loud that many will not say themselves.'
'His comments were shameful and beneath the dignity of a member of the House of Representatives. He should immediately offer an apology to black Americans for misrepresenting one of the darkest chapters in our history for his own political gain.'
