Republican Rep. Byron Donalds got into a heated exchange with MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Thursday evening over comments seemingly suggesting that Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era than they were under President Joe Biden.
At an event in Philadelphia Tuesday, the congressman — who has been introduced as vice president for former President Donald Trump — said “during Jim Crow, the black family was together” and noted that “more black people voted conservative.”
Reid asked how that period — which began in 1867 and stretched to the 1960s, when black people in the South were reduced to second-class citizens — was a “golden age for black families.”
The two talked over each other in raised voices, with Donalds telling Reid it was “gaslighting” and “twisting my words,” after he was criticized by some black leaders of the Democratic Party and the civil rights movement, as well as the campaign of President Joe Biden.
“I never said it was better for black people in Jim Crow. I never said that. And even my own words say that,” Donalds told the MSNBC host.
Republican Rep. Byron Donalds (right) got into a heated exchange with MSNBC’s Joy Reid (left) on Thursday evening over comments seemingly suggesting Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era than they were under President Joe Biden
At an event in Philadelphia Tuesday, the congressman — who has been introduced as vice president for former President Donald Trump — said “during Jim Crow, the black family was together” and noted that “more black people voted conservative.”
“When you talk about the importance of Black fathers in the home, or honestly all fathers in the home, it’s always for the betterment of children to have leadership,” he continued.
Throughout the interview, Reid wondered, “What was the authority of the black father in the family during Jim Crow?”
She read the Florida Republican a creepy 1943 story about 15-year-old Willie James Howard, a black boy from Florida, who was forced to jump off a bridge by a group of white men after Howard wrote a love note to a white man . girl was discovered.
‘Willie jumped into the cold water below and drowned while his father had to watch at gunpoint. Willie’s body was recovered from the river the next day,’ Reid read from a report by the Equal Justice Initiative.
Reid also read a quote from a Mississippi segregationist who wrote of the “policy of destroying the manhood of the Negro citizens had to be successfully carried out.”
“So the man during Jim Crow had no rights, couldn’t protect his wife from rape, couldn’t protect his son from lynching,” Reid said. “So again, why would you quote that era and say that the fact that we were all living in the house together at that time was something that we should consider a good thing?”
Donalds relented, saying Howard’s story was a “tragedy – one of the great tragedies of the Jim Crow era,” adding that it was “disgusting and distasteful.”
At this point the interview devolved into the Reid and Donalds talking over each other, with Reid telling the congressman, “It’s my show.”
Overall, Donalds emphasized that during the Jim Crow era, “black American marriage rates were significantly higher than at any time since.”
‘They’re down. And what we’ve seen recently in America, and it’s a really good thing that we should all celebrate, is that marriage rates in the black community are rising again,” the Florida Republican said. “That’s good for black families, that’s certainly good for black children.”
“It’s something I want to see, I’m pretty sure you want to see it too,” the congressman added.
On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Trump has narrowed his search for a vice president to seven hopefuls — including Donalds, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, representative of New York. . Elise Stefanik and former Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson.
Of that group, three are black men — and if elected, they would become the nation’s first black male vice president.
President Barack Obama was the country’s first black president and the current vice president, Kamala Harris, is both the first female and the first vice president of color.