Rep. Byron Donalds Conducts Master Class in Dealing with Hostile CNN Personalities
GOP Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida taught a master class Wednesday night in dealing with hostile CNN personalities following President Donald Trump’s town hall on the network.
The CNN panel, of course, was stacked with leftists, including Anderson Cooper, Van Jones, David Axelrod and Never-Trumper Alyssa Farah Griffin.
“The town hall is for the president to speak to the voters of New Hampshire, not for this back-and-forth with media,” Donalds asserted.
He continued, stating that moderator Kaitlan Collins “spent more time interjecting her own viewpoints” regarding the integrity of the 2020 election.
“Those are actually facts,” Cooper interjected. Griffin also sounded off, “Those are fact-checks.”
Donalds went on to observe, “We spent 22, 23 minutes talking about Jan. 6. We could have been talking about a whole lot of other issues instead of doing that for the first half-hour or so.”
I strongly encourage everyone to watch this masterclass of Congressman Byron Donalds taking on an entire CNN panel of fake news hacks.
Byron Donalds would make a great Presidential candidate one day. pic.twitter.com/8YeLvQjKqe
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) May 11, 2023
Donalds was right. Collins’ first question out of the gate to Trump was whether he accepted the results of the 2020 election.
She followed up with questions about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion, suggesting the National Guard should have been deployed sooner, and that was Trump’s responsibility.
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Donalds disagreed with Collins’ assertion.
“What was said in this town hall about National Guard troops … by Kaitlan was wrong. I’m on the Oversight Committee. I was in two hearings [regarding] Jan. 6. It was testified in Oversight that Donald Trump authorized National Guard troops on Jan. 4,” two days before the Capitol incursion, Donalds said.
Donalds said the 45th president followed up with a call to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller on Jan. 5, again offering troops.
During the town hall, Collins said to Trump, “But your acting defense secretary, Chris Miller, at the time, he says you never gave a formal order to deploy the National Guard.”
The former president responded, “Chris Miller wrote a book, and he’s a fantastic guy, and he was ready to go. They turned him down.”
In his book “Soldier Secretary” published in February, Miller writes that Trump did not contact him on the afternoon of Jan. 6 to order him to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol, according to Esquire.
Trump recounted to Collins that in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said, “We don’t want it. We don’t like the look.” Nancy Pelosi said, “Oh, we don’t like the look.”
“Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington were in charge, as you know, of security, and they did not do their job,” he said.
Bowser sent a preemptive letter to Miller on Jan. 5, stating, “To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, [D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department] if such plans are underway.”
The mayor added, “MPD is well trained and prepared to lead the law enforcement, coordination and response to allow for the peaceful demonstration of First Amendment rights in the District of Columbia.”
Esquire reported, “After the outcry over how federal forces responded to the capital’s George Floyd protests six months before, many senior figures at the Pentagon were reluctant to get the Guard involved on January 6.”
In May 2020, Trump deployed the National Guard after the protests turned violent outside the White House, injuring more than 60 Secret Service agents and sending nearly a dozen to the hospital.
According to Esquire, “Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund has said he asked for the Guard to be on standby at the Capitol, but was rebuffed by his bosses, the sergeants at arms for the House and Senate.”
During Wednesday’s CNN panel, Cooper defended Collins’ question, saying she was citing Miller’s book.
Donalds countered, “What he testified to under oath in the Oversight Committee are the facts.”
That was the end of the conversation. There was nothing Copper, Griffin or the rest of the CNN panel could say.
Donalds won the round.
