The Sliming of Byron Donalds
June 10, 2024
Be thankful you didn’t have the week Byron Donalds just had.
Mr. Donalds is an African-American Republican who represents Florida’s 19th Congressional District and is now on the short list to be Donald Trump’s running mate. Which explains why over the past week he has found himself unfairly maligned as hankering for the old days of Jim Crow—the sordid racial caste system that reduced African-Americans to second-class citizens and undergirded segregation from a few years after the Civil War to the mid-1960s.
It all started Tuesday, June 4. Mr. Donalds was in Philadelphia as part of Republican outreach to black men. He was visiting the city with his friend Wesley Hunt—also an African-American Republican congressman—for an event called “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars.” In the course of his discussion, Mr. Donalds said this:
