Rep. Donalds: Walz ‘watched’ poor neighborhoods burn, and Harris hurt police

CHICAGO — The morning after President Joe Biden passed the torch to his vice president at the Democratic National Convention , Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) took Kamala Harris to task over her past support for defunding the policy and cashless bail and blasted her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), for presiding over the devastating Minneapolis riots in the summer of 2020.

"Tim Walz waited four days to call the National Guard," said Donalds during a Trump for President campaign press conference to counter the DNC. "He watched the city of Minneapolis burn, and quite frankly, what was burning, it wasn't the upper-class neighborhoods of Minneapolis, wasn't the suburbs of Minneapolis. What was burned? It was poor areas of Minneapolis, which mostly are inhabited by black people and his men."

Flanked by signs broadcasting the 23% increase in murders in deep-indigo Chicago and New York City, Donalds further lambasted Harris for supporting then-Mayor Eric Garcetti for slashing the Los Angeles Police Department's budget by $150 billion and for pushing cashless bail.

"Cities in our country that have used cashless bail, like New York City, my former home city, have realized that all it creates is a turnstile for criminals to be arrested and go right back out on the streets," said Donalds, who noted that NYPD resignations are up 43% from 2018. "When it comes to law enforcement, what we have seen is a massive decrease in morale amongst the people who serve every community in America. Law enforcement officers today, they're white, they're black, they're Hispanic. They come from these communities; they want to serve these communities."

Donalds headlined the second of five counter-press conferences for the Trump campaign, which upbraided the first night of the DNC for a disproportionate focus on the former president rather than the worst inflation in 40 years or the record influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border.

"There were many personal attacks made," said Brian Hughes, senior adviser to the Trump campaign. "The mentions of Donald Trump were 147, the border eight, economy 27; inflation three, and crime six."

While the media have largely celebrated the DNC for demonstrating renewed party unity and reiterated that Harris is the candidate of "joy," her economic platform is currently limited to two tax breaks authored by Trump, widely castigated price controls on groceries, and a $25,000 credit for select first-time homebuyers.

"The only way true price gouging actually occurs is if somebody has a dominant market share, like 60, 70, 80%, or they have a dominant area control, meaning they're the only game in town for like 30 miles, then you get to gouge. But every state in the country has price gouging laws, so what she's trying to do is cover up from the fact that it is her vote in the U.S. Senate that unleashed the greatest inflation in our country in over 40 years," said Donalds, who worked in finance for nearly two decades before joining Congress in 2021. "You're going to give the keys to the economy to her over joy? Stop."

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Although the Trump campaign has historically had a fraught relationship with a press broadly perceived as adversarial, logistical meltdowns at the DNC left the press corps in Chicago underresourced as they worked well past midnight to cover Biden's dramatically delayed speech.

"It's a shame to do that to somebody," said Donalds of Biden speaking well past his normal limit for public appearances, eliciting laughter from the media. "Imma stop."