Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who is running for president as a Republican candidate, was encouraged by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt to improve his foreign policy knowledge when he did not know what a Uyghur is. In an interview, Hewitt asked Suarez if he would be discussing the treatment of the Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province. Suarez struggled to respond, prompting Hewitt to advise him to educate himself on the topic stating that he needed to talk about it every day.
Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs through forced labor camps and sterilization has been condemned internationally. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called it a genocide on his last day in office, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also followed suit.
Suarez later claimed that he was familiar with the Uyghurs but that he misunderstood Hewitt’s pronunciation of the group’s name. However, the audio recording of the exchange contradicts his claim. Hewitt used the standard pronunciation of the ethnic group in his question.
While the incident appears minor, it highlights how even a routine interview can be disastrous for a presidential hopeful. The incident has been compared to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson’s response of What is Aleppo? in 2016 when asked about the Syrian city at the center of a civil war. Other examples include when businessman Herman Cain struggled to talk about Libya in 2011 and when former President Donald Trump struggled to answer Hewitt’s question about the nation’s nuclear triad during a GOP primary debate in 2015.
Suarez also discussed the nuclear triad during the interview, stating that the ability to deploy nuclear weapons from space should be added as an extension to the existing capability to deploy them from sea, air, and land. He further added that the ability to launch nuclear weapons from space would be accompanied by a laser-based defense system.
