Byron Donalds says Donald Trump taught him how to win

The symbiosis between President Donald Trump and his endorsed gubernatorial candidate, Byron Donalds, is by now well established. Long before Trump backed the Congressman’s quest to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, Donalds was traveling the country to sell Black men on voting for the Republican presidential nominee.

While Donalds has won multiple campaigns for the state House and the U.S. House, he revealed in a recent interview that Trump’s example helped him parlay an endorsement into a victory that seems all but assured, with one of the most successful Republican politicians of this century teaching him how to win.

“The No. 1 thing you learn to do is you block out the noise. Watching President Trump with the media and the press always coming up with some crazy story that made no sense, that was just really meant to defame as opposed to inform people. It was meant to defame him. You respond to the story, but you move on. You stay focused on the mission at hand,” Donalds told Joe Mullins.

Beyond reminders to focus on the mission, Donalds also lauded the discipline of Trump’s campaign team as an example for his own operation.

“Observing him and his campaign team, they mastered the little things — making sure that they have people at the door, making sure they have people at polling locations, making sure that when they were doing events that they managed all the little things. Make sure people (who) come into your events are comfortable and they have what they need to enjoy the event. Being focused on what your message was, being focused on how you’re contacting voters and communicating with the voters, and so we do that,” Donalds related.

Donalds is also inspired by what he calls Trump’s “work ethic,” saying he figured out very quickly that was the key to parlaying important backing into momentum.

“When I started my race for Governor, he said, ‘You have my endorsement, and people think that’s the end, but it’s just the beginning,’ and I told him, ‘Sir, I completely understand. I was riding shotgun (on your campaign) the last year. I (saw) how you do it, and we’re gonna replicate that.’”

During the interview, he reiterated his rejection of Primary debates, noting that his opponents haven’t demonstrated “viability” and that he’s not going to use his campaign to “elevate” them, especially as he’s focused on get-out-the-vote efforts down the stretch.

“I’m going to go talk to the people of Florida, and my recommendation to these other campaigns is that they go spend their time talking to the people of Florida,” he said.

That field — Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, former House Speaker Paul Renner and investor James Fishback — has kept pressing Donalds to take the debate stage ahead of the Aug. 18 Primary. But with a commanding lead in the polls and the most valuable endorsement in Republican politics already banked, the front-runner seems content to keep doing it the way his teacher showed him: block out the noise, master the little things and stay on mission.