Fox News host Shepard Smith ripped into Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló on Monday for refusing to step down.
The one-on-one interview on Fox News' "Shepard Smith Reporting" took place as thousands of Puerto Ricans took to the streets to launch an island-wide strike and demand their governor's resignation in part over leaked profanity-laced, homophobic and misogynistic text messages between Rosselló and his staff.
But Rosselló, who Sunday said he would not seek re-election, told Smith he will not step down because he has a lot of work to do for Puerto Rico.
"I've made a decision. I'm not going to seek re-election," Rosselló told Smith. "That way I can focus on the job at hand. The biggest recovery effort in the modern history of United States is on our hands, we are battling corruption, and there are certain initiatives we have already started and new ones we want to put out there so that we can fix the problem."
Smith pushed back several times.
"The corruption is rampant in Puerto Rico," he told the governor. "Economically, there's a fiscal crisis, [Puerto Rico] is $70 billion in debt and in the middle of a 13-year recession. . . . Attacks on women, gays, dead relatives on your own island and after that who is left to support you?"
"I've apologized. I am making amends for all those efforts," Rosselló responded.
"They no longer trust you and your leadership," Smith retorted at one point.
When Rosselló admitted to making mistakes, Smith said: "Mistakes are things you do, that you didn't mean to do, or that you did by accident, or in error, and then you go back and you correct them. 900 pages of attacks on people of your own island are arguably not mistakes, they are a pattern and when you look at that pattern if that were some other politician other than you, what would you say about that person? Would you want that person leading you after all you said?"
"Do you hear them?" he later asked of the protestors. "Do you hear them and care what they are saying today? Is the cavalier attitude from the text messages living in the background today? I ask not for myself, but the people who were on a hot, wet day on that island saying we want him gone."
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