Rep. Byron Donalds' First Marriage Was An Utter Mess, According To His Ex

In 1996, a freshman in Florida A&M University, Bisa Hall met an 18-year-old from Jamaica. He had a thick accent, charm, and a foreign upbringing that swooned Hall ... but it was all a lie as she would find out the second time they met: He didn't have an accent and wasn't from Jamaica. The young man was Byron Donalds (from New York). Though he wasn't from Jamaica, his charm was real, and the pair would get engaged soon after meeting ... then call off their engagement before suddenly getting engaged again. The decision was made, not by love, but by the higher cost of out-of-state tuition for Hall. Donalds' Florida residency would make her eligible for cheaper rates, so they tied the knot. 

He was rough around the edges, as Hall described him — evident by the MAGA politician's two arrests while in college, for marijuana and felony bribery. Early in the couple's marriage, questions of divorce arose, but Donalds, who did not live with his wife, rejected the idea, allegedly saying, (via WCGU) "'No, I don't want to lose my wife.'" His affair would contradict this statement. Hall was heartbroken until a year later when Donalds broke up with his affair-partner, Erika Lees. "He said, '[Erika] and I have split up, and I want to give it another chance — I want my wife back,'" Hall reminisced, but she was once again left out to dry when Lees revealed she was pregnant and Donalds demanded a speedy divorce. 

When Representative Byron Donalds was named as a potential VP to Donald Trump in 2024, his ex-wife was shocked. "To see him now, out there saying, 'I'm a conservative Black man,' and I'm like, since when," She told WGCU in July 2024, "He wasn't talking about politics at all. To see him now, it's like, 'When did this happen?'" His sudden relationship with the controversial presidential candidate made her reexamine the man she once knew. "To see Trump and Donalds in collusion together, it was like, 'If Donalds were a good human, would this very bad person be pushing him as a poster child?"

In sharp contrast, Erika Lees, now Erika Donalds, has been outspoken in her support for her husband and his politics. Proudly labeling his efforts to get President Donald Trump reelected in 2024 as a sign of his patriotism, Erika further claimed that Donalds' support of Trump during his impeachment was the right thing to do. Trump — the only sitting president to ever be impeached twice – rewarded that dedication by naming the Florida representative as a possible VP before abandoning him for author JD Vance.