- GOP presidential hopeful Francis Suarez appeared not to know what a Uyghur is.
- The Miami Mayor later told Insider that he did know what a Uyghur is, he was just confused by a radio host's pronunciation.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt encouraged Republican presidential candidate Francis Suarez to bone up on his foreign policy knowledge when he appeared to not know what a Uyghur is.
"Penultimate question, Mayor. Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?" Hewitt asked Suarez, the mayor of Miami.
Suarez, who is the third Floridian currently running for the White House, appeared unable to offer any comment about the 12 million, mostly Muslim, minority population that live in China's Xinjiang province. Beijing's treatment of Uyghur has been in the news repeatedly. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on his last day as the nation's top diplomat that China's treatment of Uyghur's through forced labor camps and sterilization amounted to a "genocide." Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also called it a genocide.
In a statement to Insider, Suarez said he definitely knew what a Uyghur is, blaming the incident on Hugh Hewitt's pronunciation.
"I didn't recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used," Suarez said. "That's on me."
Hugh Hewitt: “Will you be talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?”
— The Recount (@therecount) June 27, 2023
2024 GOP presidential candidate Francis Suarez: “What's a Uyghur?” pic.twitter.com/AlRkjZCJyK
The audio of the exchange makes clear that Hewitt used a common pronunciation for the ethnic group. Suarez himself mispronounced the group during a later follow-up with the host.
"And you gave me homework, Hugh. I'll look at what a, what was it, what did you call it, a Weeble?" Suarez said, chuckling.
Hewitt responded,"The Uyghurs. You really need to know about the Uyghurs, Mayor. You've got to talk about it every day, okay?"
Hewitt declined Insider's request for further comment.
The incident while minor highlights how even a routine interview can turn disastrous for a presidential hopeful. One of the most famous recent examples was when former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who was running as the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in 2016, responded "What is Aleppo?" when asked about Syrian city at the center of a civil war.
Other examples include when Republican businessman Herman Cain struggled to talk about Libya in 2011. Former President Donald Trump himself experienced one of those moments in 2015 when he struggled to answer Hewitt's question about the nation's nuclear triad during a GOP primary debate.
Suarez was also asked about the triad during the interview.
"Yeah, you know, obviously that's the ability to deploy nuclear weapons from sea, air, land," Suarez responded, perhaps with a nod to Trump's long-ago struggle. "They're, when you think about technology and how we're deploying our assets and our strategies, there's a tremendous amount of disruption right now from drones to AI and how we strategize and make decisions."
The Miami Mayor called for a new addition to the triad: the ability to launch nuclear weapons from space.
"And I think we have to look at the ability to deploy from space, and to also have defensive capabilities with lasers and a variety of other technologies that'll give us, you know, there's obviously a lot of encouraging science that we see with Israel's missile defense system, with Ukraine's use of the Patriots, Saudi's use of the Patriots against Yemen and Iran through Hezbollah."