Florida Gov. Rick Scott gets an earful at Starbucks: ‘You’re an embarrassment to our state!’
Florida Gov. Rick Scott was simply trying to place his Starbucks order. He got an expletive-laced earful instead.
Scott was in line at the coffee chain’s downtown Gainesville location on Tuesday when a female customer working on her laptop noticed the governor — and promptly went off on him.
“You cut Medicaid, so I couldn’t get Obamacare,” the woman, later identified as Cara Jennings, yelled. “You’re an a**hole.”
The unpopular Republican governor, whose approval rating stands at just 38 percent in the Sunshine State, tried to explain that he didn’t actually cut Medicaid — he refused to expand it.
But that explanation didn’t satisfy Jennings.
“You don’t care about working people,” she said. “You should be ashamed to show your face around here.”
Scott countered by pointing out that he has created “a million jobs” during his tenure as governor.
“A million jobs? Great,” Jennings said. “Who here has a great job?”
“You should,” Scott replied.
Jeri Bustamante, the governor’s spokeswoman, approached Jennings to intervene. But Bustamante was quickly rebuffed.
“I’m not talking to you,” Jennings said, laying into the governor over a recently signed anti-abortion bill that cuts all state funding to abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, and redefines trimesters.
“You stripped women of access to public health care. Shame on you, Rick Scott. We depend on those services,” she said.
“Maybe you should try to tell the truth,” Scott interjected.
“Rich people like you don’t know what to do when poor people like us need health services; you cut ’em,” Jennings concluded. “Shame on you, Rick Scott. You’re an embarrassment to our state!”
(Cover thumbnail photo: Steve Cannon/AP)
