DETROIT, Michigan — Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Breitbart News exclusively here at the Turning Point Action People’s Convention he believes the stakes of the 2024 election are extremely high but he is hopeful Republicans, particularly former President Donald Trump, now have the edge.
“Number one, we need to win the White House, the House, and the Senate,” Scott said in an on-camera interview on Friday. “Here’s why. If we don’t win the White House, the border is not going to get secure—that’s number one. Number two is if we don’t have all three, we’re not going to get our spending under control. That means inflation never goes away. It gets worse and worse and worse. Interest rates will never come down. Next, if we don’t want to have a woke military, a weak military, we’ve got to have a president that cares about our military and a House and Senate that cares about our military. So you look at almost every issue we’re dealing with—the wokeness of our military, inflation, interest rates—it’s all going to be tied to winning these elections. So if you think about a poor kid like me, I grew up in public housing and was born to a single mom, I grew up in a country where my mom could legitimately say you can be anything. If you can’t afford to put food on the table, if you can’t afford the rent, if you can’t afford gas for your car, if you can’t afford your car, it’s not a great life. That’s exactly where this country is, so if we want to have opportunity for everybody then we’ve got to win these elections.”
Scott, who was along with most of his Senate GOP colleagues present for a meeting on Thursday last week with Trump at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), said the meeting Trump had with Senate Republicans “was unifying.”
“First off it was uplifting and unifying,” Scott said. “President Trump is going to win. We all have to get out and do our part and we need to vote and get all our friends to vote and we need to be poll watchers and do all of those things. But right now I believe President Trump is going to win this election. But he’s got to have a House and Senate that’s going to help him. He came together. He was very gracious to everybody and talked about the things he wants to accomplish. Everybody is unified that we want to help him accomplish those things because it’s a key to success for this country that every family have an opportunity.”
Scott said what Republicans need to do to win is prosecute the case against the wildly unpopular Biden agenda.
“Everybody knows Biden’s policies are bad. Republican, Democrat, or independent, they don’t want an open border,” Scott said. “They don’t want more drugs, they don’t want more criminals, they don’t want more terrorists. That’s number one. We’ve got to make sure everybody understands that Biden is doing it. Biden had the opportunity to keep the border secure like Trump had it and decided not to. Around the country in every state they’re seeing the problems. They’re seeing the fentanyl deaths. They’re seeing the criminals that are coming. So, that’s number one. And everybody in this country is seeing inflation. So I think those two issues by themselves mean Trump’s going to win. Now, there’s all still going to be the key of we’ve got to get out and vote. Right here at Turning Point what they’re talking about is all the grassroots effort because that’s really the key. In my race in 2018, I had to get more votes than Ted Cruz had to get in Texas and Florida is a much smaller state than Texas—big state but not as big as Texas. So, how we did that it was grassroots. People went out and they got the vote out and that’s what we have to do to make sure we win.”
Scott also emphasized that as a three-time winner of statewide races in a big state like Florida—he won two governor’s races and one U.S. Senate race already as he seeks a second term in the Senate now this year—that winning statewide races starts with winning local races.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks with reporters at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Thursday, June 13, 2024, in Washington, as from left, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen Roger Marshall, R-Kan., Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., listen. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“Number one, we need to work with every candidate—every Republican candidate—all across the country and help them maximize their turnout,” Scott said. “Guess what? If you want to win a statewide race, win all the local races. I’m up for election this year. I’m going to get the same number of votes and probably a little bit more because I’ve been around and this my fourth cycle doing this. But I’ll get the votes a local Republican gets. My goal is to help all Republicans win. We have to all come together and win county commission races and school board races and mayor races and state rep races and state senate races—so we’ve got to win all these races and stay active and win every race we can. The way you do that is you go get every voter you can. You talk to everybody. Every candidate has got to talk to everybody. I’ve probably shaken hands in the last 13 years with 850,000 people in Florida.”
Scott’s advice to newer GOP candidates running in key races nationwide is to go engage with every single possible voter they can.
“The first thing you think about is how you win an election: You get more votes,” Scott said when asked to give advice to newer and first-time candidates. “So you’ve got to get out there and talk to as many voters as you can. You’ve got to look them in the eye. You’ve got to tell them exactly what you’re going to do. What is your plan to improve their lives? People are going to vote because you’re going to improve their life. It’s not about your race—it’s about their life. So are you going to help them get a better job? Are you going to make sure inflation is under control? Are you going to make sure if their kids go into the military it’s not going to be a woke military? Are you going to try to keep us out of these things like forever wars? Because that’s going to improve that person’s life. You need to be talking to them. You need to look at them. You need to talk to everybody that will talk to you—everybody. Go into every neighborhood and every place you can go and talk to everybody you can.”
Scott also said he is encouraged by the fact conservatives are here in a blue city like Detroit in a battleground state like Michigan for this Turning Point event taking their message to all corners. He said it’s something he’s been doing in Florida too, and he encourages all Republicans to take their fight everywhere they can.
“Absolutely. You look at the energy right now, I’ve traveled the country,” Scott said. “I’ve traveled around my state—I’m going to be in every county, I’ve got 67 counties. By July 2 of this year, I’ll be in every county in my state talking to voters—and I talk to everybody. I did that same thing when I was governor. So yeah, you go around this country there’s unbelievable energy. There’s energy because guess what? People know that the Biden agenda is the wrong agenda. They know that the country is on the wrong track. They know the border shouldn’t be open. They know we shouldn’t have inflation. They know we shouldn’t have a woke military. You look at all these issues we’re talking about every day and they know this persecution of Donald Trump is wrong. So what we’ve got to do is get out and tell them what we’re going to do to change it.”
When asked for the plan on how Republicans retake the U.S. Senate majority, Scott said it starts with him and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) winning their reelections. Then, assuming Republicans take West Virginia where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is not running for reelection, that would put the GOP at 50 seats to the Democrats’ 50 seats. With a Trump presidency, the GOP would control the chamber but under a Democrat president and vice president the Democrats would keep control. So to get to 51 or higher, Scott said to look to places like Ohio, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and more.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., speaks to members of the media at RGF Environmental Group after a small business endorsement event Monday, May 13, 2024, in Riviera Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
“Number one, the two hardest races to win as for incumbents, the only hard races are my race and Ted Cruz’s race,” Scott said. “So, we’ve got to win Texas and we’ve got to win Florida. So now I think Ted and I are both going to win because we’re working hard and we have a lot of grassroots support, we’re raising money—it’ll be hard but we’re going to win. I think it’s clear we’ll get West Virginia. That puts us at 50-50. In a Trump presidency, we would then have control of the Senate. But in a Biden presidency, we don’t. So we’ve got to get to 51. I think you could argue which one we should get either Ohio or Montana but those are both winnable. They’re both winnable. Trump’s going to win Ohio and Trump’s going to win Montana, I think decisively. So if our candidates there—Bernie Moreno and Tim Sheehy—if they run good races we’re going to win those two. Sam Brown has got a big opportunity in Nevada against Jacky Rosen. I think Trump’s going to win Nevada and Trump’s going to win Arizona so Kari Lake has got a big opportunity there. There’s a lot of other places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan—there’s all sorts of places we have a shot. Now, it’s going to be incumbent that Trump does well. The way for Trump to do well is to do well in every local race.”
But the biggest thing Scott said is super important for Republicans is that everyone rides with Trump.
“We’ve all got to stick together and make sure everybody understands this political persecution of Donald Trump, if they can do it to the ex-president and the leading Republican candidate, can they do it to you?” Scott said. “If you don’t want that to continue, you’ve got to elect Donald Trump.”
