Fox Host Confronts Rick Scott With Poll Data Spelling Bad News for GOP
Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, was confronted by a Fox News host on Friday about the poor polling for policies that the GOP has been pushing hard for, at one point calling some of the numbers bad news.
Having previously served as the governor of Florida prior to Ron DeSantis, Scott is currently the state's junior U.S. Senator. He also has considerable status in the national Republican Party, serving as the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 2021 to this year.
During an appearance on Fox Business, host Stuart Varney pressed Scott on the considerable unpopularity of the GOP's policies among voters, citing a recent Fox News poll that found widespread support for firearm restrictions to combat the country's rising gun violence as opposed to more heavily arming people, and another poll that found two-thirds support for keeping the abortion pill, mifepristone, legal. Scott is currently sponsoring the "School Guardian Act," which would create more funding to allow K-12 schools to hire one or two law enforcement officers to provide all-day security.
"This Fox poll on guns, that's not good news for Republicans," Varney said, adding that Scott is essentially arguing that the country has enough gun laws already.
In response, Scott largely bypassed the issue of the higher polling for new gun restrictions, saying that the answer to gun violence in the United States is to more strictly enforce the laws already on the books and, in the case of schools, increase the amount of armed security. Scott compared his new legislation to the efforts he made as governor of Florida, but on a national scale.
However, research has found, specifically from American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Washington and the Center for Public Integrity, that armed security officers in schools do more harm than good, making no noticeable impact on the number of mass school shootings and disproportionately targeting disabled students and students of color with punishments.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, an organization that tracks shootings across the country, there have been at least 174 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year. That number was 646 in 2022 and 690 in 2021. In 2014, the earliest year the organization began monitoring this data, there were 272 mass shootings.
"Here's another one that might be somewhat difficult for Republicans, another Fox poll: 56 percent of voters believe that abortion should be legal," Varney added. "Again, that's not real good for Republicans. I mean, look at Wisconsin, look at Kansas."
Varney was referring to recent votes in Kansas and Wisconsin relating to abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last summer. In August, 59 percent of Kansas voters rejected the addition of an amendment to the state's constitution that would have said that citizens did not have the right to receive an abortion in the state. Earlier this month, Wisconsin overwhelmingly elected liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, tipping the institution to the left for the first time in years and paving the way for an anti-abortion law to be undone.
In response, Scott claimed without evidence that Democrats were supporting late-term abortions, and added, despite the polling he was presented with, that Americans want "reasonable restrictions" and a number of exemptions, which he did not detail. Varney again pushed back, stating that there "are an awful lot of unreasonable Republicans" pushing for abortion restrictions who might cost the party further elections in 2024.
"It's really a tough choice for women," Scott said about the medical procedure. "You feel sorry for people who are going through it."
Newsweek reached out to Scott's press office via email for comment.
