In an epic exchange on CNN on Thursday, October 31, US Congressman Byron Donalds (R-Fl) took a blowtorch to CNN host John Berman, who he accused of being deceitful and misleading his viewers on statements that former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made about women.

As background, the former president said that he will, when elected, protect women in America from the various tragedies that have ensued as a result of the open border crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border “whether they like it or not.” That was in reference to many women not voting for him.

John Berman, however, played a trimmed-down clip in which he made it look like Trump was saying he’ll do things to women “whether they like it or not,” which was obviously a gross mischaracterization of the speech that was meant to make former President Trump look bad.

Rep. Donalds destroyed Berman over the mischaracterization of the Trump speech, snapping that it was “grossly inaccurate” when taken out of context, as it was. He said, “John, that is grossly inaccurate what you just played. Play the full clip. Play it in its context.”

Continuing, Rep. Donalds added the proper context, saying, “He’s talking about the tragedy at our southern border that led to the death of Jocelyn Nungaray. Jocelyn’s mother endorsed Donald Trump because she fully believes that if Donald Trump was president, her daughter would be alive.”

He added, “And so what he was talking about, I’m gonna protect women, I’m gonna protect children,’ and he was really telling a joke about how some of the staff said ‘no, no, don’t say you’ll protect women because they’ll take it out of context.’ Obviously, what CNN is doing right now, is taking it out of context.”

Berman fired back, “No, no, no, you have the exact right context here, congressman. Congressman, you just explained the exact right context was with Donald Trump’s story was telling people how people close to him, his advisers were telling him not to use that type of language to say ‘I’m going to be your protector.’”

Rep. Donalds, in response, told him, “John, you need to stop,” to which the CNN host replied, “So you’re telling me there’s no concern from Nikki Haley or as clearly as Donald Trump said, from people close to him in his campaign, about the type of language that he’s using?”

Rep. Donalds told him, “Donald Trump is going to protect women in our country. He is going to protect children in our country,” the congressman said. “Under Kamala Harris, we have lost 350,000 children in the United States. We’ve lost them, John, talk about that. What I will tell you is once again, you’re gonna clip 5 seconds out of an hour speech and not provide context. This is why the American people frankly are frustrated with media because you guys play games, you take things out of context, you don’t explain them clearly, and you want to get caught up in some antics.”

“The heart of what Donald Trump said, very clearly is, he’s gonna protect the women of our country because Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have refused to protect the women of our country and a president should protect women and all Americans and that’s what he’s gonna do,” he added.

Watch that here:

Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video