With the 2024 presidential election rapidly approaching and Donald Trump serving as the presumptive Republican nominee, questions regarding his impending vice presidential pick have been swirling and, at the top of that list, is staunchly devout MAGA ally, Florida Republican House Rep. Byron Donalds.
Donalds has recently been tapped as a shortlister for scandal-plagued ex-President Donald Trump’s 2024 right-hand man, thanks in very large part to Donalds’ lack of commitment towards certifying any election results that go against Donald Trump, should he ever find himself in that position — i.e. he fully intends to help Trump successfully steal a presidential election, given the opportunity.
However, it seems Byron Donalds didn’t always feel so devoutly loyal to Donald J. Trump. In fact, at one point in his life, he wasn’t a fan at all, and CNN’s KFile has the receipts to prove it.
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck recently launched an investigation that discovered that Donalds — like many other now MAGAs such as Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham — was once a sharp and publicly vocal critic of the man he’s now vying to ride into the White House with.
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The KFile probe ultimately uncovered comments made by Donalds back in 2011 and 2012, when he was a Tea Party movement activist and embarrassingly unsuccessful Congressional candidate and Donald Trump was in the thick of stirring up racism-fueled conspiracy theories about then-sitting President Barack Obama, relating to his place of birth and birth certificate, attempting to paint Obama as ineligible for office.
At the time, Donalds openly and publicly criticized the then-New York real estate mogul and washed-up reality TV star for his unhinged racist rants, as well as Trump’s excessively protectionist views on economic policy.
In an April 2011 Facebook post, Donalds wrote: “Trump is a huge distraction, and cares more about himself than the country in my opinion, but I could care less about him,” with regard to Trump’s conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
“‘I don’t question his religion or his citizenship,” Donalds said of Obama at the time. “Quite a few Democrats and liberals still think Bush caused 9/11.'”
He referred to Donald Trump as a “self-promoter yelling about 25% tariffs on China.”
CNN’s report continues: “In other public comments from the same time, Donalds argued against Trump’s calls to boost U.S. manufacturing, saying it was cheaper to make clothes in China than in Michigan, and said he favored privatizing entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which would be better as a ‘voucher,’ along with raising the retirement age.”
CNN reached out to Donalds for comments on the uncovered anti-Trump messages and received this response from his spokesperson: “President Trump is considering Byron as his running mate because of the Congressman’s steadfast support for the 45th President and his historic policy agenda. The fact that these decade-old posts are now resurfacing in the middle of running mate deliberations is weak but typical of CNN.”
Read CNN’s full report here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
