Radio Host Calls Out Republican Francis Suarez for China Flub

Long-shot Republican presidential hopeful Francis Suarez appeared to be unfamiliar with China's persecution of Uyghur Muslims in the country, appearing to draw a blank just moments after criticizing President Joe Biden's administration for being made up of "intellectuals and academics who have very little, if any, practical understanding of the real world."

In an appearance on conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt's show on Tuesday, the Miami mayor ripped into the Biden administration's posture toward China, slamming Secretary of State Antony Blinken's diplomatic trip to the country last week as "disgraceful," and a projection of American weakness on the world stage.

The Biden administration, Suarez claimed in the interview, "had no coherent strategy" to stand up to an "increasingly hostile adversary" in China, adding onto a mounting series of crises across the globe Biden's administration was allegedly too inept to address.

Suarez, however, appeared unfamiliar with one of the most prominent among those crises.

Asked by Hewitt whether Suarez planned to discuss the country's persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China, Suarez did not simply appear to slip up. He had no idea what Hewitt was asking.

"Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?" asked Hewitt.

"The what?" responded Suarez.

"The Uyghurs," Hewitt said.

"What's a Uyghur?" Suarez asked.

Hewitt appeared to grow short with Suarez and said, "You've got to get smart on that."

Hewitt also chided him at the end of the interview, saying, "The Uyghurs. You really need to know about the Uyghurs, mayor. You've got to talk about it every day, OK?"

"I will search Uyghurs," Suarez responded. "I'm a good learner. I'm a fast learner."

Newsweek has reached out to Suarez's campaign for comment.

After the flub began gathering media attention on Tuesday, Suarez's campaign released a statement saying he had misunderstood what Hewitt was asking.

"Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China," his campaign tweeted. "They are being enslaved because of their faith. China has a deplorable record on human rights, and all people of faith suffer there."

The tweet added, "I didn't recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used. That's on me."

For Suarez—whose young campaign has already been hobbled by questions about his lack of experience and recent bribery allegations—Tuesday's interview marks an embarrassing misstep. China's alleged persecution of the country's Uyghur Muslim population has been central to Republicans' calls for sanctions on China dating back to the Trump administration.

Since 2017, the United Nations claims Beijing has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs against their will in what human rights groups consider "re-education camps," drawing global rebuke.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed legislation urging sanctions against China over its treatment of the country's Uyghur population amid mounting pressure from conservative lawmakers against private companies like the National Basketball Association as well as Disney, to cease operations in the country, specifically citing China's campaign against Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The following year, the United States and several other Western countries announced plans to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics over a number of alleged human rights abuses, with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress citing the country's record of "egregious human rights abuses"—including the mass internment and forced labor of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities—as chief reasons behind a boycott.

The issue is also near and dear to Florida's senior senator, Marco Rubio. In May, the Florida Republican co-sponsored legislation with Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley designed to punish the Chinese government over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims via expanded sanctions and new travel restrictions on Chinese officials accused of involvement in human rights abuses.

"As Beijing continues with its campaign of oppression against non-Chinese ethnic groups, we must uphold sanctions against Chinese authorities and companies responsible for acts of genocide," Rubio said in a statement announcing the bill.

The incident on Hewitt's show recalls past comments made by a top Suarez donor.

Tech billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, who gave $250,000 to a political action committee for Suarez's mayoral bid in 2021, said on a podcast last year that "nobody cares" about the Uyghur genocide.

"Of all the things that I care about, it is below my line," Palihapitiya said. "Every time I say that I care about the Uyghurs, I'm really just lying if I don't really care. And so I'd rather not lie to you and tell you the truth: It's not a priority for me."

Update 6/27/23, 1:32 p.m. ET: This story was updated with additional quotes from Francis Suarez, as well as past comments made by a top donor to his 2021 mayoral campaign.