In fairness to him, this is what all communists naturally exclaim when they’re excited.

All you need to know about this guy’s political instincts is this: He’s the mayor of New York and he’s an avowed Red Sox fan. Going into Miami and quoting Che isn’t unlike going to a Yankees/Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium and chanting “Yankees suck.”

If the Red Sox had literally murdered Yankee fans’ families.

Presidential Candidate @NYCMayor was captured on video uttering slogan coined by Cuban Revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. De Blasio yells "Hasta la victoria, siempre!" which translates to "Until victory, always!"

Read More: https://t.co/35oeK26Gpg pic.twitter.com/dHqHyV82An — CBS4 Miami (@CBSMiami) June 27, 2019

Politicos in Florida who know their state and who watched that clip this afternoon are aghast:

“Quoting a murderer responsible for death & oppression in communist Cuba and throughout Latin America is not acceptable. Please apologize,” tweeted [state senator Jose Javier] Rodríguez, whose district includes Little Havana. Miami political consultant Christian Ulvert, who is Nicaraguan, called the use of the quote “complete ignorance” and “beyond disrespectful.” State Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Colombian-American who also spoke at the event before de Blasio and left before he spoke, gasped when a reporter told her what he said… “Does he really know who Che Guevara was?” asked Félix Rodríguez, a Bay of Pigs veteran who helped the Bolivian army capture Guevara. “I don’t think so. If he does, he’s a f****ing a**hole.”

Florida’s two Republican senators are quick off the blocks:

Florida Democrats are running screaming in terror, from the chairman of the state party to the Miami-Dade chapter. De Blasio, of course, is claiming ignorance…

I only meant it as a literal message to the striking airport workers that I believed they would be victorious in their strike- BdB. (2/2) — Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) June 27, 2019

…but is that likely? Liz Mair remembers that he raised money for the Sandinistas and found himself inspired by “the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government” when he visited Nicaragua during that era, in the words of a New York Times profile of de Blasio from 2013. He’s well acquainted with leftist Latin American revolutionary movements. And he knew the Che quote verbatim. Where did he think it came from?

He was addressing a group of public employee union members in a city with a large Latino population and probably got caught up in the moment, reaching for a Spanish-language slogan from a famous Latino leftist that seemed appropriate for the occasion. The part about Che liquidating these people’s relatives en masse naturally slipped his mind. Che gets whitewashed all the time by the left, after all; go figure that de Blasio forgot the caveat that the whitewash only works in 49 states.

He’s going to swing by a Jewish neighborhood before he leaves town and read a few of his favorite passages from Mein Kampf. Exit question: In case the very fabric of space and time tears and de Blasio ends up as the Democratic nominee, Florida’s gone for Democrats next year now, right?