Anthony Sabatini has some choice words for House Republicans — or their leaders, at least.
“Cowards,” “spineless,” “weak,” and, of course, “RINOs.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, the 33-year-old attorney, a first-time federal candidate running for the Republican nomination in Florida’s 7th Congressional District, did not spare the rod when discussing members of his party serving in Washington. Sabatini does not think much of most of them, reserving particular scorn for GOP leadership on Capitol Hill. Sabatini hopes to join them when the new Congress convenes in January 2023, he said, to reinvigorate the party.
“I’m running because we don’t have enough strong Republicans,” Sabatini said Friday, complaining that they are “followers” who “don’t have the courage to stand up to leadership.”
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Sabatini, who is married with no children, is a state legislator and captain in the Florida National Guard. He sports endorsements from Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and a collection of conservative populists who are popular in the wing of the Republican Party most supportive of former President Donald Trump, including Reps. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. If elected in November, Sabatini has pledged to join the House Freedom Caucus on his first day in office.
Sabatini is running an unapologetic national campaign focused on pushing Trump’s “America First” agenda, which he describes as “stopping the systematic destruction of the middle class.” For Sabatini, that would require implementing a moratorium on legal immigration, defunding government agencies that mandate the coronavirus vaccine, and “destroying Big Tech and breaking it into pieces.”
His approach contrasts starkly with many other Republican congressional candidates, who are attempting to balance broad, national issues with local concerns important to the individual House districts they hope to represent next year. Sabatini signaled his disdain for such narrow-minded politics, charging that most Republicans are “generally missing in the larger fight of saving the United States and [are] more interested in bringing money back to their district.”
With war raging in Eastern Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sabatini said he is a self-professed “noninterventionist” who worries that the U.S. is becoming too involved in the conflict.
Few if any Republicans are calling for American military intervention to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s unprovoked aggression. But most Republicans are hypercritical of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and are strong supporters of aggressive U.S. economic and diplomatic sanctions to pressure Moscow to withdraw from Ukraine and ensure that Putin does not attack NATO countries. Sabatini is taking a more cautious line.
“It depends on the context,” he said when asked if he supports the sanctions Washington has levied on Moscow so far and if he would support a ban on the import of Russian energy as many Republicans are demanding of President Joe Biden. Sabatini explained that he examines all foreign policy questions through the prism of how it impacts “the normal American.” His biggest concerns about sanctions on Russia? Will it lead to “higher inflation,” already a major source of economic anxiety for many voters.
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Sabatini is running in a competitive primary that features at least one other candidate, Cory Mills, who is running as a Trump acolyte.
