Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds nearly engaged in a shouting match with CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin on Monday as they debated Donald Trump’s rally in New York City. Trump held a major rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night alongside several prominent figures, which critics have ridiculously likened to the 1939 pro-Nazi rally at the same venue. On “Squawk Box,” Donalds contended that the media’s accusations of racism are an attempt to “fear monger” and argued that no one at the rally supported comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage.”
“To the New York Daily News: is it a racist rally if you have a black man from Florida who’s originally from New York speaking at the rally? I don’t think so,” Donalds said, referring to himself. “This is the problem with most media today. They’re too busy trying to fearmonger everything instead of actually talking about the facts and the substance. [see video below]
“It was a great rally that we had last night. Donald Trump obviously spoke last night, did he say something that was off color? No, he did not. I spoke. Did I say something off-color? No, I did not. Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk, Howard Lutnick, did they say anything that was off-color? No, they did not,” Donalds continued.
The New York Daily News published a headline titled, “Trump’s MSG event turns into ugly racist rally, speakers insult Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Jews,” while The Associated Press wrote a headline called “Trump’s Madison Square Garden event turns into a rally with crude and racist insults.” But Jews, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities were in attendance at the rally and several said afterward that they weren’t offended at all. One Latino woman also posted a video explaining the context of Hinchcliffe’s “island of garbage” joke, noting that Puerto Rico often sees trash float up on its beaches. [See that video here]
CNBC co-host Rebecca Quick mentioned that many attendees and speakers at the rally have distanced themselves from Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico, which Donalds noted he and the campaign disagreed with. “Okay, so The Associated Press, ‘Madison Square Garden event features crude and racist insults.’ That did happen. You may not have been the one making them, but that did happen,” Sorkin said, to which Donalds replied: “And [Quick] just said it, the campaign has distanced itself from it, they do not agree, I do not agree. Unfortunately, it was said, but nobody agrees with it.”
Sorkin contended that many voters who support Trump’s policies still oppose him due to his rhetoric and accused those who back the former president of being “willing to engage” in the alleged “vitriol.” Noting that Puerto Ricans are all struggling under the Biden-Harris regime, Donalds replied: “Kamala Harris spends half of her time talking about her rival as Hitler after he’s been, after the attempts on his life, not once, but twice. She’s doing it right now. Every Democrat official at these rallies refer to him as Adolf Hitler.”
Continuing, he said: “You’ve got [former Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton running out there hawking her book that nobody wants to buy frankly, and she’s talking about how this is akin to 1939. Are you out of your mind? If you want to talk about rhetoric, compare. But let me go back. We are talking about the comments of a comedian and everybody’s gonna forget it in 48 hours. The real joke in America is the terrible policies of Kamala Harris.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you on that front. I’m just saying to the extent that you can speak to those people who are out there now watching saying, ‘I agree with the Trump policies, but I just can’t abide by reading headlines like that,’” Sorkin responded. Donald said voters must choose between trusting the media, which he accused of being “in the tank” for Harris or living under a continuation of the vice president’s policies.
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