Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) Responds To The Attack Against Florida GOP Volunteers

Florida Senator Rick Scott talked to Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson about a range of topics including the New Hamshire primary, the rise of Socialism on the left and the recent attack on the Duval County GOP in Florida.  A Jacksonville man faces charges after police say he crashed a van into the Duval County GOP registration tent on Saturday afternoon. Sen Scott Responded to the attack by saying “If it had been a Trump supporter, then it would all have been caused by Donald Trump” 

Listen Below:

Full Transcript:

Video Clip: He’s going to slow down, but he didn’t. He got his engine and headed straight. We’re all Americans. This is America. When when did violence become the answer? Just because I don’t agree with you.

Guy Benson: Back on the Guy Bensons show. Another soundbite from a first coast news report. A scary scene in Jacksonville, Florida, over the weekend. It was Saturday when a man we now know, a young 27 year old man who works in theater tech. Happened upon a registration tent for the Republican Party. They were Trump supporters. He saw who they were. He gun his engine and he plowed through their tent and their setup, knocking everything down, narrowly missing. A volunteer. He then got out of his van. And gave them the middle finger and then drove off. He’s been arrested. He’ll be charged. And I don’t think it takes a genius to conclude that there was a political component to this attack, a vehicular assault on peaceful political volunteers. And this story is getting very, very little coverage nationally. A few check the box segments that I’ve seen a few readers on TV. You know, we did a website piece about it. It’s on our. So on our site, you can check it out there. So the media has an excuse, they can’t say, oh, no, it’s on a blackout, see, look here. Here are some links. But the tone of the coverage, the breadth or lack thereof of the coverage, I think says a lot. And as I explained in my opening monologue this hour, you absolutely cannot convince me. I’m a pretty open minded person. You cannot convince me that if it were a Trump supporter with his Trump bumper sticker on his. Pickup truck and he plowed through a Democratic registration event. With an intent, probably it looks like an intent to harm or kill. There were people there. This would be a massive national story. It would be a huge controversy and Republicans everywhere would be asked about it. And we’d have a big, big discussion about rhetoric and tone and incitement. In his political speech, getting too dangerous. Should the president cool it? And instead, it’s sort of like a.. Yeah, something probably many of you did not hear about until I told you about it today. And I wrote about it today at Townhall.com. Joining me now on the line is U.S. Senator Rick Scott, a Republican of Florida, who reacted to this over the weekend on Twitter. Senator, good to have you back. Thanks for doing this.

Sen. Scott:  Now, think about it, if if it had been a Trump supporter, then it would all have been caused by Donald Trump. A hundred percent. So now that it’s, you know, it’s somebody that’s trying to stop Republicans. Who’s who’s responsible? Democrats. They’re not going to hold anybody responsible.

Guy Benson: See, that’s. That’s what gets to me here, Senator. And I. I’ve been and I want to be crystal clear again. I do not believe about the pinning of blame for violent acts on political speech. I am hardcore against that in both directions. And I have a long history of being consistent on that principle. But you are absolutely right. This would be a national story and it wouldn’t just be blaming Trump and his rhetoric. You know this better than anyone, Senator. What the media does is they take a controversy like this and they would come to you. They would be all in your office. They’d be calling for a statement. Will you weigh in on the president’s rhetoric and should he calm down in the words he’s using? Because look what his supporters are doing. This would become a whole effort to tar not just the president, but the party and other people in the party.

Sen. Scott: Right. And I haven’t seen any. The Democrats say they shouldn’t be doing this.

Guy Benson: Have they been asked?

Sen. Scott: Of course, not We’re sitting here fighting over whether we’re gonna end up with a soft socialist country. And in so much, the media just doesn’t care. I mean, we know the squalor of socialism. You can see it any place or it’s it’s happened before. You can see it happening right now in Caracas, Venezuela, and there’s no conversation about it. In contrast, the attack Trump, where we have the best economy we’ve ever had, the lowest unemployment, lowest unemployment for African-Americans, for Hispanics. We’ve got a stronger military. We’re secure securing our border. But the left media doesn’t want to talk about that. So it will be something else. But I’m up in New Hampshire. I’m up here. Republicans need to win. Trump needs to win. And I’m talking about the fact that the Democrats now they’re their complete socialist. And we also get to talk about the debacle of Iowa, where they Democrats, we know they can’t do math, but they clearly showed that they can’t do that. And they want it. They wanted to Medicare for all which they could never pay for. They wanted to the green new deal, which can’t pay for. So it’s it’s most fascinating time. And by the way, I was over the Trump rally a little while ago. It is packed. Yeah. They’re already on lines to get in.

Guy Benson: I’ve already seen they’ve let some people into the place and it’s already filling up. And we’re still hours away from the president speaking. And Senator Rick Scott is my guest. And you just you hit on a bunch of topics. And I just want to slow down and get back to some of those points, cause you’re bringing up a lot of interesting subjects. First, you mentioned Venezuela and that comparison on socialism. I think one of the most interesting and powerful surprises of the State of the Union address was Juan Guadio who was in the gallery? I was not expecting that. I think just the solidarity showed to him as the proper and legitimate leader of that country from the U.S. president on that type of stage. I think that was a very important moment.

Sen. Scott: You know, it’s interesting the. There was more support for Guido than the 100 year old Tuskegee Airmen with his great grandson. There was more support for Guido by everybody than it was for the saw that the servicemen that came out came back to see his family and his young children. So it was interesting how partisen the Democrats made it. I thought I thought some talked about, you know, what he should talked about. This is what I thought I was gonna do. This is what I’ve done. This is what I planned to do. But but they couldn’t even they couldn’t even recognize that all these wonderful people that the president won the recognized for what they’ve accomplished.

Guy Benson: Yeah. And I was at least pleased to see a good number of the Democrats stand and applaud for Guido. I wonder. I know AOC was boycotting the whole event. I wonder if she would have. But on this issue of socialism, she has endorsed AOC has Bernie Sanders. Poll after poll in New Hampshire, where you are at the moment, show Bernie Sanders in the lead in that state. And now within the last couple hours, a national poll from Quinnipiac showing Bernie Sanders now eight points in the lead nationally over Joe Biden. I know that there’s been an effort by Republicans sometimes over broadly to generalize the Democratic Party as a bunch of socialists. But if they have a socialist as their front runner, I mean, we have to start having pretty serious conversations of what those implications are. And Senator, one thing that concerns me is younger people. You know, my contemporaries and younger. We have no real memory of socialism inaction, no real memory of the Cold War, and not really offended by the concept of socialism, in fact, in many cases they’re sort of warm to it. What’s your message to people who might say, why not? Why not try this seemingly fair, good sounding idea.

Sen. Scott: Every time it’s ever been tried and failed? And let’s just look at what you can look right now. What’s happened in Venezuela. Death and squalor. You see children starving to death. Children not getting medicine. Children happen to walk four hours a day to get water. That is socialism. And It’s the government. Whether they run everything or they tax everybody that produces anything to death so they can’t compete. It’s the same thing. You will kill the job market. The most important thing you can do for an individual is create the opportunity to be independent. And that what socialism is going to do is make everybody dependent on government the way I look at it. The Democrats are trying to do say they’re going to tell you how to live your lives. What Republicans want to do is they want to give you the opportunity to live the life you decide you want to do. We all have different goals, but I don’t want government telling me how to live my life. I don’t want Mike Bloomberg telling me the size of my soft drink. What? What won’t they tell us? So when they do that, it ruins ingenuity. It ruins it. It has never worked. And by the way, when we are companies have to compete. And if our taxes are higher or individuals pay higher taxes, we can’t compete globally. We just kill the whole job market. It doesn’t work. It never worked anyway. I wouldn’t have. Let me give you my shot at the dream. I know I have to work my butt off to get there, but give me my shot. I grew up in public housing. I think that my mom said this. She said, Rick, you can be anything, but you have to work your butt off to get there. That’s what I want.

Guy Benson: Yeah. And you worked your butt off and you became very, very wealthy. Then you’ve been attacked for being so successful, even though you didn’t grow up with the silver spoon. Right. And it’s funny how success sometimes is treated like the enemy, which seems very, very backwards. Also backwards. Senator, you referenced in a moment ago Iowa, the fiasco of the Democratic Party. We still don’t know who won the Iowa caucuses. We may never know. Actually, I am of the belief that we may never actually know who really won because of the amount of the screw ups there. You’re your reaction to what happened there. And then I have to ask you. You bankrolled some ads in Iowa and that had some people scratching their heads. What’s he up to? Is he making a play for the future in a presidential state? Well, what’s Rick Scott up to in Iowa? Tell us why you ran the ads that you did.

Sen. Scott: Well, clearly, I mean, I sat through the impeachment and I watched the Democrats sit there and say what Joe Biden did, too. And he said he did this to say, I’m going to hold up money if you don’t fire a prosecutor. That’s that’s, you know, investigating a company that my son works at and gets paid. Eighty three thousand dollars a month as a board member. A month. A month as a board member, they kept saying, that’s OK. But if President Trump fires an ambassador, that he has every right to do that. There’s something sinister. So I said, you know what, I’m going to I’m going to put something up and I’m going to try to make sure everybody sees the corruption in Joe Biden. So that’s what I did. And my my goal is I’m going to continue to do everything I can. And that’s why I’m up here. I’m going to call these Democrats out for what they’re doing. Joe Biden’s corruption, the Medicare for all, which is going to kick 180 million people off of their health care plans. The Green New Deal, which is going to shut down coal, natural gas on, you know, every all the fossil fuel. So this will matter. We will not have a society like we have now. I mean, I’m in traffic right now in New Hampshire. People trying to get to the Trump rally. I’m I’m thankful that we have cars. I’m thankful that we have you or am I, you know, in our homes. I’m thankful where we have natural gas. But the Democrats, they want to get rid of it. I mean, Bloomberg wants to get rid of and he wants get a coal and let’s get to a natural gas, by the way. Florida is the Florida where I where I represent. I think 60 percent plus of our homes are natural gas.

Guy Benson: You know, there are real implications for some of these policies, and you watch these Democratic debates and they say these things over and over again, they sort of wash over you. But when you think about what it would actually require, especially the Bernie Sanders wing, it’s it’s pretty breathtaking. As you mentioned, you focus a lot of your fire in these ads on Joe Biden. And what you say is his corruption. I would definitely say there was an ethical conflict of interest there on exactly what barisma was up to and paying all that money to someone who was massively unqualified but had the right last name. Do you think that perhaps your messaging has worked? I mean, you look at what Joe Biden did in Iowa, fourth place. You look how it’s shaping up in New Hampshire, possibly fourth place again, maybe even fifth place. It seems like the Democratic frontrunner for many, many months, Senator, is is looking like a paper tiger. I know there’s a long way to go and you’ve got the springboard in South Carolina and he could get back into it. Just his his performance in these first two states and on debate stages. I’m just I’m not so sure Republicans ought to be that worried about him.

Sen. Scot: But clearly, the ad worked clearly. I think the impeachment backfired. I think Pelosi probably is trying to help Biden with the by holding the impeachment papers I think. they put so much effort into it, decided to try to cover up his corruption. I think it backfired on him. So he clearly does appear to be doing very well. We’ll see and we’ll see tomorrow how he does up here. That doesn’t appear to be a lot of energy up there. There’s a lot of energy for Trump to drive around in Manchester, Manchester right now. There are Trump there Trump people. There are red hats all over this place,

Guy Benson: And that’s some good color and flavor on the ground in Manchester. Big event coming up around 7:00 p.m. Eastern for the president. It’s just counterprogramming to the Democrats. Their primary tomorrow night. Up in New Hampshire. Last question, Senator. It’s about Florida. I saw a report earlier that Michael Bloomberg is spending 30 million dollars in your state, which is it’s an expensive media state. You know that better than anyone, but that’s an awful lot of money. Is Mike Bloomberg, who’s now in third place nationally in the Quinnipiac poll. Is he a threat, in your estimation, to possibly play or even win in a state like Florida in this nominating process?

Sen. Scott: You know, right now, I think it’s I think it’s up for grabs. I mean, there’s no message on the Democrat side that appears to be taking off in Florida. But I don’t see Mike Bloomberg’s message. I mean, if you look at his message, you know, basically he doesn’t like the Second Amendment. Floridians do. He doesn’t like coal and natural gas. We do actually like. Like energy. He you I don’t know. And he has no grass roots. So I think he I think you’ll have a hard time. But, I mean, he’s spending a lot of money trying to get the message out right now.

Guy Benson: And we will see if that is a strong and smart investment or not. That’s coming up. We’ve still got weeks and weeks till Florida. But it’s fun to think about and talk about, especially with such a fluid race on the Democratic side. You’re up there with the president, the Republicans getting ready for a big night in Manchester. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, really appreciate your time. Looking forward to next time.

Sen. Scott: Thank you Guy, have a good day.

Guy Benson: You bet. We’ll take a quick break. When we come back, the senator mentioned the Green New Deal. There is a new statistic about the environment, carbon emissions that I want to read to you. It actually froze me earlier today when I saw it and I read it twice. I’ll read it to you after this break.