Miami mayor Francis Suarez hasn’t heard of Uyghurs

Miami mayor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Francis Suarez stunned conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday by admitting ignorance about the plight of Uyghur Muslims in China.

“Penultimate question, Mayor. Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?” Hewitt asked on his syndicated show.

“The what?” answered Suarez.

“The Uyghurs,” the host repeated.

“What’s a Uyghur?” asked the 45-year-old Suarez.

“OK, we’ll come back to that,” Hewitt said before admonishing Suarez: “You’ve got to get smart on that.”

Hewitt later tweeted that Suarez “was pretty good for a first conversation on air about national security — except for the huge blind spot on the Uyghurs. ‘What’s a Uyghur?’ is not where I expect people running for president to say when asked about the ongoing genocide in China.”

Suarez’s gaffe recalled 2016 Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson’s puzzled query, “What is Aleppo?,” in response to a question about the Syrian refugee crisis.

The Chinese government has detained roughly 1 million Uyghurs in facilities across the northwestern Xinjiang Autonomous Region under its national counterterrorism law and a regional counter-extremism policy, according to the US State Department.

Reports from the region indicate many Uyghur prisoners have been tortured and systematically raped by their Chinese captors.

On Jan. 19, 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that China has committed crimes against humanity and genocide for its internment of the predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang.

President Biden in February 2021 dismissed Beijing’s mass internment of Uyghurs as a “different norm,” but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last year the president “raised genocide and forced labor practices” on a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Asked about Blinken’s meeting with Xi last week, however, Suarez told Hewitt “it was disgraceful.”

“I think what our country is doing under the current president is projecting weakness, beginning with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which I think is part of the impetus for Putin making his calculation to invade Ukraine,” he went on. “I think if you are Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin and you’re getting older, and you … have opportunities or windows to fulfill your territorial ambitions, it doesn’t get any better than having a president like Joe Biden.”

Suarez, who entered the Republican primary earlier this month, told Hewitt his experience as the son of Cuban exiles and the “first Miami-born mayor” has readied him for the presidency.

“My parents came to this country, like many others, seeking opportunity,” he said. “And I’m running for president because I fundamentally believe in this country and the opportunities that it’s given me.”

Suarez has yet to register support in a national poll but hasn’t shied away from hitting leading candidates like former President Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump lost young voters to Joe Biden, which is pretty crazy,” he pointed out to Hewitt. “I think I’m the only candidate running who didn’t vote for him in 2016 and 2020. I wrote in a Republican in 2016 — [Florida Sen.] Marco Rubio — and I wrote in [former Vice President] Mike Pence in 2020.”

The Suarez-supporting super PAC SOS America is expected to run a six-figure ad campaign in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, hoping to secure his place at the first GOP primary debate in Milwaukee on Aug. 23.

The Miami mayor is reportedly under federal investigation for accepting $170,000 from a city real estate developer, which he may have taken in exchange for approving a $70 million development project.

Suarez has denied any wrongdoing.