Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted three photos on Monday of a man he said was canvassing for him when he was violently attacked. After allegedly speaking with the victim’s father, Rubio wrote that the man was beaten after “4 animals” said, “Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood.” Photos of the man show he was wearing a Marco Rubio T-shirt.
Anti-fascist sleuths and later the Miami New Times identified the man as Christopher Monzon, aka Chris Cedeno, aka the “Cuban Confederate,” a former member of the white nationalist group Florida League of the South who also served as the vice president of the Miami Springs Republican Club. He says he was canvassing for the senator in Hialeah, Florida, a suburb of Miami and a Republican stronghold when he was attacked for being … a Republican.
Now, three days later, according to the Miami Herald, reports have emerged that when Monzon initially told police about his attack, he never mentioned a political motivation. But once the tweet became public, he told the police his attack was politically motivated.
RELATED STORY: Marco Rubio says his white supremacist canvasser was victim of a political attack. Police disagree
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When Rubio’s camp was confronted Wednesday by the Herald, asking why he tweeted with such conviction Monday about the attack being politically motivated, the senator’s spokeswoman, Elizabeth Gregory, said the intel came from Monzon’s father.
“First, you spend two days smearing the victim, and now you accuse him of lying,” Gregory wrote in an email. “You are either dishonest or misinformed. The victim’s father was on Spanish radio on Monday discussing the political nature of this attack. And he told the Senator the exact same thing that morning when they spoke for the first time when the Senator called to check on his son’s condition.”
The Herald writes that a man claiming to be Monzon’s father called into Radio Mambí, claiming his son was attacked while canvassing for the Republican Party. But he never said his son was beaten because the neighborhood doesn’t allow members of his political affiliation.
Rosa Peña, who hosts the show, pounced on the political angle, saying, “This is one of the ways that anarchist elements, paid leftists—paid by other totally vested interests—do this to completely terrorize the situation.”
According to the police report from the Hialeah Police Department, Miami New Times reported that Javier Jesus Lopez, 25, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. On Tuesday, police arrested Jonathan Casanova, 27, of Miami, on the same charge. That’s two arrests; Rubio tweeted about “4 animals,” so either he was mistaken about the number of attackers, or there are still two who remain uncharged.
The Herald reports that Lopez has never voted and his mother, who is a registered Republican, told the outlet the attack had nothing to do with politics.
Rubio has continued to tweet about the attack, essentially defending Monzon.
“Local media spent 2 days treating the GOP canvasser who was attacked as a criminal & denying the attack was politically motivated,” Rubio tweeted Wednesday.
Monzon, who once ran for city council in Hialeah, gave an interview in 2021 claiming that he had resigned from the white supremacist group League of the South in 2018 but then defended the organization.
“I never belonged to an explicitly white nationalist organization. At the time that I belonged to the League of the South, they did not declare themselves to be a quote-unquote white nationalist organization,” Monzon told the Daily Dot.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the League of the South is a “neo-Confederate” hate group with a long and documented history of racist and antisemitic behaviors.
Jack Kershaw, a board member in 1998, reportedly once said, “Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery. Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?”
The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Monzon was arrested in 2017 for using a Confederate flag to fight against protesters rallying against a Confederate street-naming event. Monzon allegedly engaged in a verbal altercation with the demonstrators, shouting that they were “a cancer on the face of the earth! All Jews are!”
Monzon was also present at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
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