Exclusive — Byron Donalds: ‘Florida Does It Right,’ We’re Trying to Help Washington ‘Get It Right’

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that “Florida does it right, and Washington, we’re trying to help them get it right” when it comes to the Chinese coronavirus, among other issues.

“Florida does it right, and Washington, we’re trying to help them get it right, because what we’ve seen in the last ten months, 11 months, has been a disaster, and everybody knows it,” Donalds told Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow last week at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona.

“There’s even no need to detail all the problems anymore, because we’ve seen how disastrous this is,” the congressman added. “So you pick whatever part of society you want to talk about, things are not going well in our country.”

Donalds added that the problems the United States faces today is what happens when policies are followed “that divide Americans, that put Americans into groups, as opposed to accentuating individuality of all people, accentuating their humanity, allowing them to be their best person, giving them the freedom from government.”

Marlow noted that Washington, DC, is “insisting on more mandates, insisting on more limitations of mobility depending on things like vaccination status, they still want us to have masks on,” and that “in Florida, you guys haven’t had masks in over a year.”

“The problem is not the science. The problem is politics,” Donalds said. “We have people who are making political decisions opposed to scientific ones.”

The congressman went on to say that when it comes to the coronavirus, “there are treatments available, people can go get vaccinated if that’s what they choose to do, there are people who have natural immunity, like myself, T cell, B cell immunity, they have that memory, their body knows how to fight this thing.”

“We have to understand that it’s time to move past — not just saying the virus is over, we beat it, that’s irresponsible — but studies are showing the vast majority of people get over COVID and they move on with their lives,” Donalds said.

“So let’s actually start moving into that mindset in America, as opposed to being like, ‘Oh my gosh, we got a case spike, we have to lock down again, we have to start closing again, we have to limit businesses again,’ because business owners can’t take much more of this. Our economy can’t take much more of this. Kids in school, they can’t take much more of this,” he added.

Marlow mentioned that he noticed Florida “never took the approach that we’re going to beat the virus.”

“You took the approach — try to curtail it as much as we can, and then let people make their own choices, and history is looking very good on that,” Marlow said. “And we’re still not seeing Washington adopt that approach. Maybe Joe Biden will finally pivot to that.”

On Monday, President Joe Biden admitted in a video call with U.S. governors that “there is no federal solution” to the coronavirus pandemic.