By the number of Republican presidential candidates already announced this year, all of them will have to be on top of their game. And it’s clear that Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is not quite there yet.
This was evident during Tuesday’s recent radio interview with The Hugh Hewitt Show. On the show, Suarez was asked about his ideas on all sorts of things, foreign and domestic. And while he seemed to have a good handle on some topics, he showed a surprising lack of knowledge about some of modern history’s most atrocious human rights abuses.
Hewitt asked Suarez if he planned to address the ongoing problem for Uyghurs in his campaign. This was Suarez’s response, “The what? What’s a Uyghur?”
Hugh Hewitt: “Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?”
2024 GOP presidential candidate Francis Suarez: “What's a Uyghur?” pic.twitter.com/AlRkjZCJyK
— The Recount (@therecount) June 27, 2023
As everyone but Suarez knows, Uyghurs are people of Turkish ethnic descent who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northern China. Unfortunately, in recent years, they have been subjected to alleged human rights abuses by the Chinese government, basically because of their Muslim religion.
According to reports, millions of Uyghurs have been “detained” and held in internment camps for years now, as well as members of ethnic Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities. In these camps, it is suggested that detainees are met with all manner of mistreatment, including sexual and physical abuse, torture, inhumane living conditions, forced labor, and even death, according to CNN.
It is estimated that some one million individuals are still being held in camps run by the Chinese Communist Party.
Naturally, anyone looking to run for the Oval Office should be at least somewhat knowledgeable about the situation and have a plan to make it better.
Clearly, Suarez has no idea.
As Hewitt advised him, “You’ve got to get smart on that.”
Let’s just say it’s not a good look for someone who could one day run our country. Although, he got to be better than what we have now, right?
