WASHINGTON – Rep. Byron Donalds speaks Tuesday at a black voter outreach event for the former president Donald TrumpHe suggested that black families were more united and better off during the era The Jim Crow eracaused an immediate reaction from top Black Democratic officials.
At a Philadelphia campaign event, Donalds, a Florida Republican like Trump, championed President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs in the 1960s, including expansion of federal food stamps, housing, welfare and Medicaid for low-income Americans.
“You see, during Jim Crow, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. Not only were more blacks conservative during the Jim Crow era — blacks have always been conservative — but more black people voted conservatively,” Donalds, one of Trump’s top allies in Congress and a campaign surrogate, said in comments released for the first time. Philadelphia Enquirer.
“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson — you go this way and now we’re where we are,” he said, referring to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare at the time.
Following up on those remarks, Donalds said he’s seen a recent “revival of Black families” — where young people are forming nuclear family units — “helping breathe life into the resurgence of the black middle class in America,” the Enquirer reported.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, DN.Y. He spoke on Wednesday and gave a fiery speech, giving numerous examples of how blacks have suffered under racial discrimination.
“It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made a factually inaccurate statement that Black people were better off during the Jim Crow era. This is an unusual, disgusting and out-of-pocket observation,” Jeffries said.
“When a young man named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered because of Jim Crow without consequence, we were no better off,” he said. “Because of Jim Crow, black women were no better off than we were when they were sexually assaulted without consequence. …How dare you make such an ignorant observation? “You better check yourself before you destroy yourself.”
Sarafina Chitika, spokeswoman for the Biden-Harris campaign, also criticized Donalds’ statements and the Philadelphia incident: “Donald Trump has spent his adult life and then his presidency undermining the progress that black communities have fought so hard for — essentially following his campaign’s promise of ‘Black propaganda’ going into white neighborhoods and returning America to Jim Crow.”
Members of the Congressional Black Task Force issued a statement Wednesday evening calling Donald “a mouthpiece that will speak loudly the quiet parts that many would not say themselves” and demanding that he “apologize to Black Americans for misrepresenting one of the darkest chapters in our history” for his own political gain. for”.
Donalds, sometimes a Trump’s possible vice presidential nomineeafter posted the full video of the comments In response to democratic criticism. In a separate video, he said the Biden campaign was “lying” and “gas lighting” because “they’re trying to say I said black people were better off under Jim Crow.”
“I never said that. They’re lying. . . . What I said was that you had more black families under Jim Crow, and under the HEW era, under the welfare state, Democrat policies helped destroy the black family,” said a Video sent to X on Wednesday.
Rep. Wesley Hunt, a black Republican from Texas, who spoke at the event Tuesday, came to Donald’s defense. X.
“Democrats have replaced the black father in the house with Uncle Sam, and when strong black leaders point it out, Democrats come unglued,” Hunt wrote. “We’re trying to have a national conversation about strengthening black families, strengthening American families, and that’s very troubling on the left.”
The Trump campaign event was billed as “Congress, Cognac and Cigars” and is part of a broader effort. The Trump campaign Reach out to black voters In swing states like Pennsylvania.
Kyle Stewart and Nnamdi Egwuonwu contributed.