(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., is standing behind former President Donald Trump amid criticism stemming from comments made at the Black Conservative Federation Gala on Friday.
“The president was really just enjoying himself,” Donalds clarified during a Sunday interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It was a great celebration for black conservatives across our country.”
Critics, including Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, voiced their discontent after the former president compared his criminal indictments to discrimination faced by black Americans during his gala speech. Trump also suggested that his black support is influenced by the legal challenges he is currently facing.
“I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time—and a lot of people said that’s why the black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against,” Trump stated. “They actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”
Trump at the Black Conservative Federation Gala: I got indicted and lot of people said that’s why the black people like me… pic.twitter.com/QENwQvvyLI
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 24, 2024
Some individuals took issue with Trump’s remarks, including Haley who called the comparison “disgusting.” She also clamed that Trump’s comments were “huge warning sign” that voters should not back him in 2024.
But Donalds, who is black, concurred with the former president and GOP presidential hopeful, asserting that the indictments faced by the president are led by either Democrats or Democrat-appointed prosecutors.
“Yes, this is political persecution from the Department of Justice and from radical DAs throughout our country,” Donalds affirmed. “This is something similar that black people had to deal with — with the justice system themselves.”
Trump is currently facing a thirty-four-count indictment over hush money payments in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. Soros-linked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is leading the case after campaigning for DA in 2021 on investigating the former president.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, charged Trump with 37 felonies over the former president’s handling of what he described as personal White House records.
President Joe Biden has privately expressed his regret that Garland did not expedite the cases against Trump, his likely opponent in the 2024 presidential election.
Smith charged Trump with four counts related to Jan. 6, following the anti-Trump House Jan. 6 Committee’s recommendation for charges against the former president.
Not to be outdone by Smith and Bragg, Fulton County District Attorney General Fani Willis, also a Democrat, charged Trump and 18 other co-defendants in alleged criminal efforts to question the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Willis is currently under scrutiny for appointing her lover, Nathan Wade, to lead the Trump case. She has taken several vacation trips allegedly paid for by Wade using his Fulton County contract—granted by Willis, creating a glaring appearance of conflicts of interest.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who pledged to pursue the Trump Organization during her 2018 campaign, secured a $350 million judgment against the Trump-owned company over alleged financial fraud.
