Florida Republican Representative Byron Donalds did not mince words when it came to twice-failed Democratic presidential candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton after she described members of his party as being in a “cult”.
“How do you feel about being told you’re in a cult?” Donalds was asked during a recent appearance on CNN.
“I stopped caring about what Hillary Clinton had to say long ago because she lost a long, long time ago,” Donalds replied. “And she’s largely irrelevant as far as I’m concerned. But to a broader level, since Hillary wants to engage, allow me to engage.
“You lied multiple times, you destroyed emails, you destroyed evidence, and then you laundered phony information that you knew was phony into the intelligence community because you were scared you were going to lose,” Donalds went on. “You did all this, and you still lost, so I’m not going to listen to Hillary Clinton about who I should and should not support.”
“She has lied to the American people repeatedly. She used our government to spy on the campaign of one of her opponents. Yes, America, she did that. So if people like talking about Watergate and Nixon, look no further than Hillary Clinton and the Crossfire Hurricane,” he said, alluding to the code name of the FBI’s ‘Russia collusion’ investigation into then-GOP nominee Donald Trump and his 2016 campaign.
The FBI never found any evidence that Trump worked with Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the election from Clinton, as she and most Democrats at the time claimed. Multiple congressional probes and a special counsel investigation headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller also found no evidence to support the accusation.
Clinton called Trump an “illegitimate president” for years after his victory.
“I tried really hard, but then literally from his inauguration on, it was nothing but, you know, accusing people of things, making up facts,” she told the co-hosts of “The View” earlier this fall. “Everything that I worried about I saw unfolding, and so I think that he’d be even worse now because he was somewhat restrained—believe it or not—in the first term by people who he hired because he thought they would go along with him and they stood up to him.”
Clinton made headlines again this month for her inability to move on from her 2016 presidential election loss to Trump.
Clinton took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to attack Trump in response to a report that his 2024 campaign is trying to “rebrand” him as a “moderate” on the issue of abortion.
“He thinks women are going to fall for this?” Clinton wrote.
In a story published on Rolling Stone, sources alleged that Trump’s campaign is already plotting how to portray the former president’s stance on abortion in a way that will appeal to voters of both parties. According to the article, Trump thinks he can pass himself off as a moderate in this race.
After the Supreme Court decided to overturn the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, Republicans seemed to lose their footing on the abortion issue. Some have speculated that the topic of abortion was a deciding factor in Democratic victories nationwide in the 2022 midterms.
Democrats are targeting Trump on abortion.
“There is no ‘vagueness’ or ‘middle ground of sorts’ about Donald Trump’s position on abortion. Take his word for it: he was ‘proud’ to overturn Roe v. Wade; he’s advocated for ‘some form of punishment’ for women who have an abortion; and he has promised to ‘lead the charge’ in getting a national abortion ban passed. He’s even running ads—right this second—bragging about his role in overturning Roe,” President Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement late last month.
