Rep. Byron Donalds asserts that the warnings about creeping socialistism seem to be true. He cites politicians from the extreme left like Sen. Bernie Sanders or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
“In 2020, when we were telling the world that the radical Democrats believed in socialism, the media said we were lying. They thought it was a joke. They thought it was a game,” Donalds, R-Fla., said Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.
“The Democrats did what they always do. They said that we are gaslighting the American people.”
Donalds continued:
Look at what they actually did after they took power. The American Rescue Plan has created an inflation unlike any we have seen in America in a generation. They propose a bill called Build Back better, which sounds more like socialist propaganda. They tell Americans that spending more money will solve our problems.
Two Democrat senators who are red state representatives were the only thing that saved us against Bernie Sanders radicalism and Joe Biden.
Donalds was referring specifically to Senators. Joe Manchin, West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona.
The Florida Republican, noting that he’s seen economic textbooks in high school that make socialism and capitalism seem equal, said gender ideology and critical race theory aren’t the only threats that parents of public school children should worry about.
“They want to indoctrinate our kids. It’s more than gender identity. It’s more than CRT,” Donalds said. “They are indoctrinating children to make them think that socialism is somehow equivalent to capitalism.”
Donalds, who joined House in January 2021, shared with the CPAC crowd that he was a Brooklyn-born poor kid and that he wants others to have the opportunity to succeed. He said that socialism would not allow this.
“The left loves to deride capitalism, but they actually love capitalism,” he said. “They love what it creates for them. But they want you, they want me, and they want all hardworking Americans to bend the knee. But America has woken up and we realize that we are not going down a socialist road.”
In talking about the left’s agenda, Donalds singled out a failed attempt to empower the Internal Revenue Service to monitor the Americans’ financial transactions. He said the Green New Deal, pushed by Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., would “deindustrialize the United States.”
“They want to pack the Supreme Court. Why? … They don’t want a Supreme Court that will actually interpret the Constitution. They want a Supreme Court that will enshrine socialism in these United States,” Donalds said.
The Florida Republican, referring to Democrats’ proposal for a federal takeover of elections, added: “They want to fix the elections to make the rest of America like California.”
“Their design [is] to make sure the elites in our country and the useful idiots in Washington, D.C., are the ones who control our economy,” Donalds said.
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