Candidate Who Aggressively Attacked DeSantis and Trump Becomes 1st to Drop Out of GOP Primary
Miami Republican Mayor Francis Suarez, who jumped into the GOP primary race as the “moderate” and virulently anti-Trump and anti-DeSantis candidate, is now the first to drop out of the race for 2024.
Suarez announced his campaign in June as the only Latino candidate for the Republican nomination. On Tuesday, he told supporters that he is suspending his run.
“Running for President of the United States has been one of the greatest honors of my life,” Suarez wrote in a lengthy post to X, formerly called Twitter. “It was a privilege to come so close to appearing on stage with the other candidates at last week’s first debate.”
Running for President of the United States has been one of the greatest honors of my life. This country has given so much to my family and me. The prospect of giving back at the highest levels of public service is a motivator if not a calling. Throughout this process, I have met…
— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) August 29, 2023
“While I have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to making this a better nation for every American remains,” Suarez wrote.
Suarez was unable to earn much traction in his very short run for the nomination. He failed, for instance, to win enough donor support to even jump the important hurdle to be included in last week’s first GOP primary debate.
Suarez also stumbled on foreign policy early in his campaign, when, during a radio interview only a few weeks after he entered the race, he proved entirely ignorant of the plight of the Uyghur people in China.
Appearing on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Suarez was asked if he had any policy positions on China’s genocide against its minority Muslim Uyghur population.
Suarez’s reply was not encouraging. After Hewitt asked if he would be addressing the issue, Suarez chortled a bit and said, “The what?” And making it completely clear that he had no clue, Suarez then added, “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
The Uyghurs, of course, are a Muslim ethnic group native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northern China, who have been subjected to appalling human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Uyghurs have been rounded up by the Chinese government, placed in forced labor camps, tortured, sterilized, and forced to work in factories that make products to be sold to the West.
Suarez’s lack of knowledge of one of the greatest ongoing human rights abuses in the world today made him a less-than-serious candidate.
But the Miami mayor also fell outside the Republican base by setting himself up as an attack dog against both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
For instance, Suarez blasted DeSantis for dropping masking requirements during the pandemic. As far as Suarez was concerned, the state should have maintained masking requirements and fined those who wouldn’t wear them, Politico reported in 2021.
Suarez also attacked DeSantis on the recent controversy over the state’s school curriculum on black history. Suarez claimed that DeSantis was teaching kids that slavery had some good aspects to it.
The Florida school lesson states that during slavery, some slaves “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
This is not a claim that slavery was beneficial. It is simply a true statement of what happened in the pre-Civil War era.
But Suarez claimed that DeSantis was trying to sanitize slavery.
“I’ve been very vocal, very clear about the fact that there’s no virtues to slavery that should be taught in our school system,” he said on Aug. 22, according to ABC News.
In another case, Suarez blasted DeSantis for being “no ‘relationship” guy,” according to the Washington Examiner, telling “Fox & Friends” in June: “You know, the governor isn’t particularly a relationship guy. You know, he doesn’t have, from what I understand, a great relationship with a lot of our federal elected officials.
“That’s why he lost, I think, 12 out of 13 endorsements in his own state for congressman because he doesn’t call people and he doesn’t try to build a relationship,” Suarez added.
Suarez has also been a vocal critic of Donald Trump and was quick to tell anyone who would listen that he didn’t vote for Trump in 2020.
His stance in opposition to two of the most popular GOP candidates in America today made him an odd man out as far as most Republican voters are concerned. Suarez had no traction from the beginning, so it isn’t surprising that he is also the first one to quit the race.
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