The Republican gubernatorial primary in Florida has gotten off to an ugly start.
GOP candidate James Fishback has fired off some odious smears against front-runner Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman and MAGA ally of President Donald Trump, whom he slurred as a “slave” to “corporate interests,” and he refused to apologize when confronted over his remarks, reported MS NOW.
“Fishback doubled and tripled down on his racist slur, telling Florida Politics that Donalds ‘has no right to complain’ and shouldn’t be offended by the slur because, Fishback said, the representative’s ancestors weren’t enslaved in the United States,” wrote MS NOW columnist Ja’han Jones. “His quote invoked themes popularized by some Black conservatives in the extremely online ‘American Descendants of Slaves’ movement, who’ve sought to drive a wedge among Black people by differentiating those with recent immigrant histories from those without such history.”
Fishback later shared a story on social media about the congressman’s fundraising with a caption calling him a “SLAVE who was auctioned off for $31 million.”
“Donalds is one of few Black Republicans in Congress, and he’s often made it his duty to downplay racism in American society, such as last year, when he whitewashed and romanticized the Jim Crow era as a period when ‘the Black family was together’ and voted conservatively,” Jones wrote. “As my former colleague Joy Reid explained to him around that time, the notion was absurd, considering many Black people weren’t allowed to vote at all during that time because of the whole racism thing.”
Jones pointed out that Donalds was getting a taste of his own medicine.
“In an ironic twist, Donalds is now facing the same sort of racist attacks he helped fuel against Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential bid last year,” Jones wrote. “After Trump and the conservative movement spread baseless misinformation that Harris wasn’t truly Black because she also boasts Indian heritage, Donalds downplayed the controversy and appeared to cast doubt himself on Harris’ Blackness.”
“Now, it appears he’s getting a taste of his own MAGA medicine as an opponent to his right flank attempts to pull his Black card and label him a ‘slave,’” the columnist added.
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