A Black Republican Congressman from Florida who backs Donald Trump for President is taking fire from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ spokesperson.
“Supposed conservatives in the federal government are pushing the same false narrative that originated from the White House,” Jeremy Redfern tweeted to Rep. Byron Donalds on Wednesday.
“Florida isn’t going to hide the truth for political convenience,” Redfern added. “Maybe the congressman shouldn’t swing for the liberal media fences like Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Redfern quote-tweeted Donalds objecting to a controversial passage in the 216-page set of guidelines.
“The new African-American standards in FL are good, robust, & accurate. That being said, the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted. That obviously wasn’t the goal & I have faith that the Florida Department of Education will correct this,” Donalds said.
Donalds also responded to Redfern’s attacks directly.
“What’s crazy to me is I expressed support for the vast majority of the new African American history standards and happened to oppose one sentence that seemed to dignify the skills gained by slaves as a result of their enslavement,” he tweeted.
“Anyone who can’t accurately interpret what I said is disingenuous and is desperately attempting to score political points. Just another reason why l’m proud to have endorsed President Donald J. Trump!”
Redfern’s reference to Harris was deliberate, given her speech at Jacksonville’s Ritz Theater last week, in which she accused the DeSantis Administration of “gaslighting” people on how slavery’s “benefits” are handled in the standards.
“Adults know what slavery really involved — come on! It involves rape. It involves torture. It involves taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world. It involves subjecting people to the requirement that they would think of themselves as less than human,” Harris said.
“So in the context of that, how is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” she added. “That in the midst of these atrocities there were some benefits?”
It is unclear if the Department of Education will be of any help, given Secretary Manny Diaz Jr. defended the standards in response to Donalds.
“The federal government won’t dictate Florida’s education standards. This new curriculum is based on truth. We will not back down from teaching our nation’s true history at the behest of a woke White House, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman,” Diaz tweeted.
He also defended the whole product in total during a Tuesday radio interview. He framed the language as the inclusion of “stories of individuals, individual slaves who through their perseverance, their strength, their resiliency, figured out how to acquire skills despite the fact that these atrocities were being committed, despite the fact that they were in a system where human beings were being owned.”
DeSantis has condemned Harris’ position as a politicized “hoax,” meanwhile.
“They talk in gory detail, a lot of the bad in American history, including of course the injustice of slavery, but she is trying to perpetuate a hoax and I know they’re using it to attack me because Biden’s administration and Harris has been attacking me since they got in office and they’re always attacking Florida,” he said Tuesday on Fox News.
Redfern said the comments by him and Diaz spoke for themselves. Florida Politics reached out to Donalds for further comment and will update when we have it.
The post Ron DeSantis spox attacks Byron Donalds’ ‘swing for the liberal media’ appeared first on Florida Politics – Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..
