'Awkward': Undercover operative says Byron Donalds speech got 'tepid golf claps'

Florida Representative Byron Donalds, a MAGA Republican who was rumored to be on Donald Trump's list for potential vice presidential picks before JD Vance was selected, reportedly crashed and burned at a conservative event.

A former Republican strategist went to his old stomping grounds to give an inside look at how the GOP is reaching out to Latino voters, but what he found was two conservative worlds failing to mesh.

In a post called, "I Went To The First Annual CPAC Latino So You Wouldn't Have To," conservative pollster Mike Madrid gives his accounting of how it went. He bluntly states that, "Reports about the GOP understanding Latino voters appear wildly exaggerated."

Stating, "This CPAC event was unlike any I had attended in the past," Madrid noted something that stood out above all else: it was a CPAC event with only one MAGA hat present.

"This probably should have been my first clue that something was amiss. As the well-tailored suits and dresses rolled in on the clearly successful and largely Cuban crowd, I counted only one red MAGA hat on a red, white, and blue bedazzled clearly non-Hispanic white woman," he wrote. "The official attendee count declared 700, and there was only one MAGA hat among them. There were no performative clown shows that have come to define CPAC as the MAGA Mardi Gras of America. Very few sequined purses. No gold Trump statues."

Madrid reported that the sophisticated attendees focused on economic ambitions, but things changed once the event took a MAGA turn.

"After lunch, things really got lost in translation. It was as if two worlds completely collided and neither group had any sense or understanding of why they were all there," according to Madrid. "The CPAC celebrities took the stage and tried to turn it into the MAGA rally we have all come to expect. Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, the leaders of CPAC, took to the stage with Katy Perry music blaring and immediately leaned into the Republican red meat extravaganza that the most rabid partisans come looking for."

That did not go over well, he said.

"All of this fell completely flat. The crowd offered tepid golf claps at cued moments for applause. A few people stood and politely removed themselves from the ballroom. It was as if the whole crowd felt they were suckered into a timeshare pitch they were being held captive to for an entire afternoon. None of them had signed up for this," he wrote. "This was a sophisticated business crowd looking to network and find value for their enterprises, and they were suckered into a Charlie Kirk podcast."

Madrid said the "capstone that made this all clear was the speech that Congressman Byron Donalds gave."

"Donalds, a MAGA favorite and GOP rising star who is likely the next governor of Florida, took the stage to a polite welcome. Donalds immediately began ripping into the socialists who won in New York City's mayoral primary and started his speech by warning everyone that he would not be polite or reserved in his attacks," Madrid wrote. "Donalds, too, fell completely flat. Awkwardly so."

Madrid even provided a video of part of Donalds' speech.

Read more here.