Rep. Byron Donalds Defends Jim Crow Comments

Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida on Thursday defended comments he made this week that invoked Jim Crow — a period of racial violence and segregation — as an era when “the black family was together.”

“I never said Jim Crow was better for black people,” Donalds, a Florida Republican, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid during an interview with “The ReidOut” on Thursday night.

The comments came after Donalds, who is sometimes mentioned as a potential Donald Trump running mate, was outraged after saying at the former president’s campaign event in Philadelphia on Tuesday that fewer black families were divided during Jim Crow.

“Don’t try to push the fact that marriage rates were better in the — higher, higher, I want to be clear — higher in the Jim Crow era to mean that I think Jim Crow is great,” Donalds said. “That’s a lie. That’s gaslighting. I would never say such a thing.”

At Tuesday’s event aimed at reaching black voters in battleground Pennsylvania, Donalds, a Trump campaign surrogate, suggested that by embracing Democrats, circumstances have gotten worse for black people. He pointed to programs enacted by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s that included the expansion of federal food stamps, housing, welfare and Medicaid for low-income Americans.

“See, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, not only were more blacks conservative — blacks have always had a conservative mindset — but more blacks voted conservative,” Donalds told the audience Tuesday.

When Reid pointed out that the Jim Crow South was marked by restricted rights for black people, such as blocking voting access, and said Donalds was “inaccurate,” the Florida Republican responded, “No, I’m not being inaccurate.”

“All I was talking about was black families,” Donalds said.

Donalds’ comments Thursday echo his previous defenses amid criticism from Democrats, including from members of the Congressional Black Caucus and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who condemned Donalds’ comments as ” strange, outrageous and unfashionable.” pocket observation.”

The Biden-Harris campaign also said in response to the comments that Trump “spent his adult life, and then his presidency undermining the progress that Black communities fought so hard for — so it actually tracks that his campaign’s ‘Black reach’ is going to a white neighborhood and promising to take America back to Jim Crow.”

Donalds said Wednesday that Biden’s campaign was “lying” and “misrepresenting” because “they’re trying to say I said black people were doing better under Jim Crow.”