Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida addressed a Thursday incident caught on video by the Daily Caller in which he was called a racial slur by an anti-Israel protester during a Friday Fox News appearance.
Donalds was at George Washington University when one of the protesters verbally accosted him, accusing him of being on the payroll of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), before calling the Republican congressman a “race traitor” and “Uncle Tom,” in video posted on X by the Daily Caller.
Donalds, who is black and a conservative member of the House of Representatives, said the incident highlighted the “vile people” at the anti-Israel protest.
Read: Florida Reps Byron Donalds And Anna Paulina Luna Face Off With Protesters At GWU
“What I saw was you had a large amount of vile people like that protester and many others,” Donalds told “America’s Newsroom” co-host Bill Hemmer. “They were shouting a lot of hateful speech towards Jews. Some hurled it at me, but that’s fine, I’ll deal with that on my own. At the end of the day what you have in these encampments like you reported are a lot of people not students at these universities.”
Read: UNC Students Defy Attempt By Pro-Hamas Protesters To Tear Down The American Flag
“They are using these protests as a way to gin up more fear and more intimidation amongst Jewish and other students at these campuses who just want to go to school,” Donalds continued. “So it is really important for these universities to step up and to protect the students and not allow these outside forces to take over their institutions.”
Donalds then turned his criticism to President Joe Biden, accusing the president of being “mealy-mouthed” in his Thursday statement on the campus protests.
“The president is weak, the president is soft,” Donalds said. “His speech was mealy-mouthed because he doesn’t want to offend these protesters because he doesn’t want to lose votes in Michigan and Minnesota. Let’s call it exactly what it is: Free speech is protected but what you cannot do is trespass or intimidate or violate the civil rights of other students in the process.”
Police removed anti-Israel protesters from a plaza at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) early Thursday morning and a building at Columbia University Tuesday night as the protests turned violent.
Read: Alan Dershowitz: How Many Campus Protesters Will Turn Terrorist Themselves?
Other black Republicans and conservatives have come under attack from liberals. “The View” co-host Joy Behar lectured Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, both prominent black conservatives, about racism on the May 23, 2023, airing of “The View,” then skipped Scott’s June 5, 2023, appearance on the ABC show.
After Scott gave the response to President Joe Biden’s 2021 address to Congress, liberals launched racist attacks, including a racist hashtag campaign that Twitter allowed to trend.
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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