Byron Donalds and Ted Cruz drew a line in Miami. The GOP should hold it | Opinion
Republicans drew a much-needed line this week in Miami when gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, speaking at the GOP Lincoln Day dinner, called out the threats of antisemitism and bigotry in the party.
Donalds denounced a “strain” of the party that he claimed could “co-opt the conservative movement,” and pushed back on those who want to end all immigration to the U.S.
Cruz, the headliner for the fundraiser, had a similar, if blunter take: “If you are a bigot, if you are an antisemite, if you are a communist, if you are a jihadist, there is no room for you in the Republican Party, and we don’t want you here.”
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. If elected, Donalds would be the first Black governor of Florida. A day before the dinner, James Fishback, a Republican investor, announced his own entry into the Florida gubernatorial race. Fishback is opposed to all immigration to the U.S., the Herald wrote, and his immigration platform is to the right of President Trump. And yet Fishback’s mother is an immigrant from Colombia.
The comments at the Miami dinner also come on the heels of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview last month with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who praises Hitler and dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. That interview is increasingly causing a split within the Republican Party amid a broader concern over the perceived rise of antisemitism in the GOP.
A complete repudiation of antisemitism and bigotry clearly is needed, unfortunately. A story last month by Politico detailed a shocking culture of racist, antisemitic and homophobic sentiments among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont, as revealed in thousands of repugnant texts shared on Telegram.
The message at the Lincoln Day Dinner was muddied a bit by Donalds’ use of the phrase “woke right” to describe what’s happening. The Brookings Institute’s Jonathan Rauch told the Miami Herald that “it seems like ‘woke right’ is just becoming a generalized term of abuse and what you call someone that you disagree with.” The phrase has most recently been used in reference to political tactics to censor speech, he said.
But setting that aside, it’s still important to see the GOP denouncing hateful and divisive rhetoric in the party.
“Are we going to have a spirit of fear when it comes to people who say they agree with us, but their words do not align with our principles, or are we going to have a spirit of power and say no to the soft bigotry that might be popping up on social media?” asked Donalds, who has been endorsed by Trump.
At the Republican Jewish Coalition conference over the weekend in Las Vegas, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Fine took on Fuentes, calling him “the most dangerous antisemite in America.” He added: “He has chosen to take on the mantle of leader of a modern-day Hitler Youth. Friends, make no mistake: Tucker is not MAGA.”
His words are refreshing but Fine himself, at times, has represented the vitriol and bigotry the GOP is denouncing. His anti-Muslim attacks have been particularly vicious, including calling Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, a Muslim terrorist. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, urged Congress to publicly condemn him for his “anti-Muslim, anti-American and anti-Palestinian rhetoric.”
For years, the GOP has pushed principled leaders out for not embracing Trump and his Make America Great Again ideology — which has pushed the party further to the right and toward extremism — leaving many to question if there was any line the party wouldn’t cross.
But it seems a line does exist, based on what was said in Miami. Calling out hate shouldn’t be so noteworthy, but in today’s political climate, it is. And that is why this moment matters.
For too long, Republicans have avoided confronting fringe voices in the party and even embraced them. That reluctance, helped along mightily by Trump’s own inflammatory rhetoric (immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” for example) has emboldened extreme views.
Now some, including Donalds, Cruz and Fine, are reclaiming what were in the past considered to be traditional conservative principles and rejecting antisemitism and bigotry outright. Let’s hope Fuentes and the Young Republicans get that message, too.
This story was originally published November 13, 2025 at 4:15 PM.