Donalds spars with Stephanopoulos: Trump is focused on Harris’s record over her race

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) pushed back against ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos when pressed on why former President Donald Trump has questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s ethnicity, contending he has put a heavier focus on her record as a lawmaker.

The question Donalds was responding to was in reference to Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual conference this past week, during which Trump questioned why Harris had been identifying as black when “she was always of Indian heritage.” The Florida congressman argued that Trump made this comment when responding to a question from ABC’s Rachel Scott, and called the discussion over his remarks “a phony controversy” that most voters ultimately do not care about.

“It doesn’t really matter, the president mentioned it,” Donalds said on ABC News. “What he also talks about far more frequently is the fact that Kamala Harris is the person who created this massive inflation which is destroying black families, white families, Hispanic families”

He continued, “It’s her failure as border czar that has left our Southern border wide open. More than 10 million illegal immigrants coming into our country. Record fentanyl coming into our country, which has killed more Americans than at any other point in the history of our country with respect specifically to fentanyl, and the fact that she and Joe Biden have unleashed one of the worst foreign policies in the history of our country that has us on the verge of World War III. That is Kamala Harris’s record. President Trump talks about that frequently, but yes, he did mention it in Chicago in response to a question from Rachel Scott.”

Stephanopoulos then claimed that Donalds “repeated the slur again” and asked why he and others are questioning Harris’s ethnicity. This prompted a back-and-forth disagreement between him and Donalds, with the two interrupting and talking over each other.

When Donalds was given the chance to respond uninterrupted, he said Trump spoke about Harris’s ethnicity for “two minutes” during an Atlanta rally on Saturday, and spent over half an hour discussing her record and how it’s impacted the United States. 

“George, I’m going to tell you again, he brought it up,” Donalds said. “AP is the one that wrote the headline when she first came into the United States Senate. Didn’t talk about her being black, talked about her being the first Indian American senator. AP brought that up. I mean, George, we could have this conversation for the entire segment, but none of this matters to the American people.”

Donalds was also asked about whether Trump would pardon the rioters at the Jan. 6 Capitol protest, to which the congressman contended that Trump said he would review each case individually. Stephanopoulos then pushed back and argued Trump said he “absolutely” would, with Donalds then arguing Stephanopoulos did not include all of Trump’s comments, including his desire to check each protester on a case-by-case basis. 

The 2024 presidential election is set to be held between Trump and Harris, as Trump became the Republican Party’s nominee last month, and Harris has received the delegates needed to become the Democratic Party’s nominee. Since President Joe Biden has bowed out of the race, Harris has received both a boost in her approval rating and in fundraising, with her campaign stating it raised $310 million in July.

Trump stated on Friday evening he would meet Harris in Pennsylvania next month for a debate hosted by Fox News, a change from the previously decided network of ABC News back when Biden was still running for reelection. The Harris campaign has knocked Trump for not sticking with the previous plan, and stated the vice president plans to stick with ABC News to host the debate.