MAGA candidate squirms as red state crowd pushes him to split with Trump
The Tampa Tiger Bay Club had hoped to hold a forum this month between the two major party candidates for governor, Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly. After the Donalds campaign cited a scheduling conflict, aides offered his running mate, former Miami-Dade County state Sen. Bryan Avila, to speak in his stead.
That became a bit awkward on Friday when audience members asked Avila on several occasions whether he or Donalds disagreed at all with any of President Donald Trump’s policies, such as his mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that fellow Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar declared in a new campaign ad on Thursday had “gone too far.”
Speaking on behalf of Donalds, Avila seemed intent on not saying anything remotely controversial....