Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) speaks on stage during Day 3 of Revolt World 2024 at Pangaea Studios on September 22, 2024, in Atlanta, Georgia. | Source: Julia Beverly / Getty
It must be hard being Rep. Byron Donalds.
Imagine if it was a major part of your job description to serve as the political janitor who tours media outlets to clean up every mess made by Donald Trump during one of the ex-president’s unhinged, often racist, and always fact-deficient rants. Imagine getting passed up as Trump’s VP pick for some white guy who once hated Trump and compared him to Adolf Hitler and still having to debase yourself constantly by backing every falsehood and expression of bigotry your MAGA massa spews before the public. Trump claims Black people love him because of his mugshot and Donalds has to go to a Black barbershop and put Trump on the phone so he can say it again. Trump erroneously questions Kamala Harris’ racial identity and Donalds has to double down on his cult leader’s racism while serving as his resident “Black friend.” It’s a never-ending shuck and jive grind. It must be exhausting.
Over the weekend, Trump delivered a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, during which he wrongly insisted that Harris is “mentally impaired” just moments before he reminded us of his own cognitive decline by suggesting that cops could better do their jobs if they simply had “one real rough, nasty day,” or “one rough hour” where they could presumably commit violent acts of police brutality freely and without fear of consequence. After Trump’s speech was widely criticized for resembling a fan-fic version of The Purge, Donalds made an appearance on CNN so he could argue that Trump didn’t say what we all heard him say.
CNN host Abby Phipips questioned Donalds about the assertion that calling Trump a “threat to democracy” — which he easily proved he was after losing in 2020 — constitutes “violent rhetoric.” She pointed to his “one rough day” remark as an example of actual violent rhetoric. Donalds predictably responded, not by immediately defending Trump’s call for police violence, but by claiming he never said it.
“No, no, he didn’t say ‘one violent day,’” Donalds claimed. “That’s not even what he said. Let’s be honest about what he actually said.”
Philip wasn’t about to go back and forth with Donalds about what Trump said, because, again, we all heard what he said, so she simply asked the producers to replay the clip. Donalds confidently chimed in, saying, “Play it again. Play it again because he didn’t even say that. I want to hear it.”
So, the clip was played and, of course, it showed Trump saying the thing we heard him say the first time, and Donalds responded by switching up his argument from “that’s not even what he said” to a fact-less defense of what Trump, indeed, said.
“We have to acknowledge the reality going on in every city in America,” Donalds began. “Crime is massive.”
Host Keith Boykin cut Donalds off, noting that the congressman’s pivot to crime is “not answering the question” he was asked about Trump’s violent rhetoric. Donalds protested, saying, “That is answering the question.”
“Because the reality in America…crime is massively up,” Donalds said.
Boykin was not having it. You could hear the frustration in his voice as he shouted back, “Crime is not massively up. That’s a lie!”
As Donalds and Boykins continued to shout over each other — with Boykins trying to point out that FBI crime data contradicts the false narrative that “crime is massively up,” and Donalds accusing Boykins of “lying to the American people” by, well, attempting to introduce statistical facts into the debate — Phillips took back control of the conversation so that she could present the data Boykins was trying to point out.
Actually, we have already reported on how crime data doesn’t match Republican talking points:
Violent crime in America has virtually done nothing but decline since the early 1990s, and crime analysts report that U.S. crime, in general, is currently at a 50-year low. But Republicans continue to ignore the explicitly clear databases of the FBI and local law enforcement agencies —the same databases where they get the Black-on-Black crime statistics they intentionally misinterpret in the most racist ways possible—so they can keep hammering away at the same stale false narrative that crime, especially in the Black community, is rising under Democratic leadership faster than Trump rose for a power fist-appropriating photo-op immediately after getting shot at.
From CNN:
Preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% national decline in overall violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in 2020. And preliminary FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 showed an even steeper drop from the same quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in murder and roughly 15% decline in overall violent crime.
There are limitations to the FBI-published data, which comes from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data, and the submitted data usually has some initial errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime. But these statistics and other data sources make it clear crime has indeed declined to some extent nationally, though not everywhere.
Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said that if the final 2023 figures show a decline in murder of at least 10% from 2022, this would be the fastest US decline “ever recorded.” And he noted that both the preliminary FBI-published data from the first quarter of 2024 and also “crime data collected from several independent sources point to an even larger decline in property and violent crime, including a substantially larger drop in murder, so far this year compared to 2023, though there is still time left in the year for those trends to change.”
So, while the FBI’s crime database may not be 100% flawless, it certainly beats the Republican talking point that crime is on the rise or “massively up,” which is not backed by any database outside of maybe TrustMeBro.com.
Clearly, Donalds is not interested in dealing with the “reality in America,” and neither is the man he keeps abandoning any semblance of integrity to shill for. Let’s not forget that, before suggesting that cops get a day or an hour of accountability-free violence, this is the “reality” Trump described to justify it:
“See, we have to let the police do their job. And if they have to be extraordinarily rough. And you know, the funny thing with all of that stuff, look at the department stores — same thing — they walk into it. You see these guys walking out with air conditioners —with refrigerators on their back. The craziest thing. And the police aren’t allowed to do their job. They’re told if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension, you’re gonna lose your family, your house, your car.”
