Byron Donalds promises ‘cordial conversations’ with Legislature as Governor

Byron Donalds

Let the healing begin.

That’s the big takeaway from U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds‘ interview Saturday night on Fox News.

The Naples Republican told Lara Trump that he’d be collaborative with the Legislature, a meaningful comment given the arm twisting from the Governor’s Office and national media surrogates about legislative “RINOs” and “Republican-lite squishes” surrounding the immigration legislation passed after a series of Special Sessions earlier this year.

“We saw some of the stuff in the Legislature, and I don’t really want to get too deep in it,” Donalds told the daughter-in-law of the President who endorsed him, by way of prioritizing “setting the example of how we’re going to have the cordial conversations that are necessary.”

Beyond that, Donalds had a message for those allied with likely gubernatorial candidate First Lady Casey DeSantis who might want to push oppo against him.

“I’m not going to be intimidated. I know what I’ve done wrong in my life,” Donalds told Trump.

He noted a youthful arrest for marijuana possession and a no contest plea for theft before he was old enough to drink, before previewing how he intends to frame that as the beginning of a redemption narrative.

“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young. But you know, when I was a youth leader, we would tell the children in a youth group that when you mess up, you make up, but you never give up. And I never gave up on myself,” Donalds said.

He then offered a message to his would be critics.

“So to people who want to dig up dirt and throw it at me, I say, I’m not going anywhere, I’m going to be right here. And I think that if you can go through life being better than you were the day before, then nobody can do anything to you.”