Just days after criticizing one bigot in the MAGA movement, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., ran into the arms of another.
Scott had a rather tepid statement criticizing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks about Puerto Rico at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally over the weekend, saying the joke was “not funny and it’s not true. Puerto Ricans are amazing people.” (By the way, the number of Floridians of Puerto Rican heritage is a little less than 1.2 million, according to census data.) But Scott didn’t have any problem sitting with self-described “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism” conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer for a podcast discussion Tuesday.
As Media Matters reported, the interview was a fawning affair on the whole, with the senator thanking Loomer for her efforts as a college student back in 2014 during his campaign for governor, and for her part, Loomer praising Scott as an “honorable man.” (For the record, this “honorable man” was the CEO of health care company HCA when it paid $1.7 billion to settle one of the largest instances of Medicaid fraud in history; recently he’s suggested the case was politically motivated.) Liberal media watchdog Media Matters also noted that Loomer has a history of insulting Puerto Ricans, having claimed they shouldn’t be allowed to serve as federal judges because they’re “not even from this country” — which they are.
It appears that all it took to lure Scott to Loomer’s podcast was her endorsement of him over Sen. John Thune for Senate majority leader, should Republicans reclaim the Senate. Loomer spent a large part of the interview harping on Scott’s bid for Senate leadership, as HuffPost noted. This included a question about what the “MAGA base” can do “to get President Trump’s attention so that: one, he issues a statement calling for an open-ballot vote; and two, he endorses you to become the next Senate GOP leader?” More than anything, that seems to have been what Scott was after: an ally to call for Trump supporters to push for him as Senate majority leader. Seems like he’s getting a bit ahead of himself, given Senate control is very much up in the air, to say nothing of his own race.
Loomer has been a source of some of the most vile conspiracy theories and outright racism that Republicans have lobbed at Kamala Harris this election cycle, including that if Harris wins, “the White House will smell like curry.” She’s been so toxic that even some conservatives have questioned Trump’s closeness to her. But it seems Scott, who’s been hanging onto a single-digit lead in polls in a competitive re-election campaign against Democratic candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, is less bothered by racism when he doesn’t think it’ll cost him votes.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.