United States President-elect Donald Trump is encouraging a Florida legislator who celebrated the killing of an American citizen by the Israeli military to run for Congress.Trump said in a social media post on Sunday that if State Senator Randy Fine decides to seek a congressional seat in Florida, the state lawmaker would have his “Complete and Total Endorsement”.
Fine, who has a long history of anti-Muslim statements, sparked outrage earlier this year when he appeared to praise the killing of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a US activist who was fatally shot by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank.
“Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway,” Fine wrote in a social media post in September.
Eygi was taking part in a peaceful protest when she was shot. Both Israel and the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden have dismissed her killing as an accident.
Fine’s post – which X (formerly Twitter) found to be in violation of its violent speech policy – is part of a long list of inflammatory, anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic comments by the state legislator.
“Fine is a friend to no one except fascism,” Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian-American activist from Florida, told Al Jazeera.
“Trump’s endorsement signals a deepening alignment with the violent, fascist elements within the capitalist class, whose interests are served by sowing division and perpetuating the dominance of imperialism.”
Fine often proclaims that the US has a “Muslim problem”. In 2021, when told …