Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) blasted congressional Democrats for visiting with the communist government in Cuba after controversial left-wing commentator Hasan Piker did the same.
“One thing that’s frustrating to me is you have Democrats that go down there, stay in four-star hotels where there’s plenty of electricity while the people next door don’t have anything, and act like the Cuban regime is this wonderful group of people,” Scott said.
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The Florida senator and former governor is one of the most outspoken critics of communist Cuba on Capitol Hill. Scott made the comments criticizing Democrats for their Cuba policy in an In Focus interview with the Washington Examiner’s Peter Laffin.
“What they’re telling you is they don’t care,” Scott told Laffin. “They don’t care about political prisoners. They don’t care about the people of Cuba. They believe in what the Castro regime has done. And so why would any American vote for something like that?”
He blasted Democrats for visiting the communist island after Piker, a Twitch streamer who has said things such as “America deserved 9/11.” Piker visited Cuba with a group of Democratic Socialists of America and Code Pink activists, which also included Rep. Ilhan Omar‘s (D-MN) daughter, Isra Hirsi.
Shortly thereafter, Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) visited the Cuban regime.
“How is that anything about what this country believes in? He wants our form of government to fail,” Scott said.
Scott told Laffin that Piker has called for the senator’s death and the deaths of all capitalists.
“He’s a Democrat commentator, I guess,” Scott said of Piker. “He said I should be murdered. Then he said all capitalists should be murdered. He said we deserve 9/11. He’s antisemitic. He hates Israel. And so these Democrats went down to Cuba with him.”
Piker, who has a considerable social media following on the Left, has been embraced by the left-wing of the Democratic Party, with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ro Khanna (D-CA), and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani each appearing in Piker’s content. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, have also each publicly appeared at events with Piker.
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But Piker’s controversial statements have caused headaches for centrist Democrats such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who have warned of the impacts of his rhetoric.
In the interview with Laffin, Scott also discussed his aims for Cuba, saying he hopes to see free and fair elections on the island and the release of all the regime’s political prisoners.
