U.S. Representative Randy Fine (R-FL), facing mounting national outrage over his on-video declaration that “We don’t want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress,” has refused to retract the remark. Instead, in a Sunday post on X, the Florida Republican doubled down — and named Armenians first.
“Armenians should not serve in Congress,” Fine wrote. “Neither should Somalis. Or Guatemalans. Or — wait for it — Israelis. If you are a citizen of a foreign country, you shouldn’t serve in ours. We need to pass my bill to stop the invasion of dual citizens in Congress. NOW.”
The post confirms, in Fine’s own words, the statement Zartonk Media reported on Friday following condemnation from the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
The framing does not survive scrutiny. Fine did not say “dual citizens should not serve in Congress” on the video that triggered the original outrage. He named a specific ethnic group, Armenians, and called for their exclusion from elected office in the United States. The Sunday cleanup, written days after the fact and only after public backlash, does not change what was said on camera. It only confirms it.
More telling is the order. Of the dozens of countries that permit dual citizenship with the United States, Fine chose to lead his Sunday list with Armenians. The placement is not incidental. Fine is currently facing a Republican primary challenger, social media figure Dan Bilzerian, who holds dual American-Armenian citizenship. The legislation Fine references in his post — a bill to bar dual citizens from serving in Congress — would, if passed, disqualify Bilzerian from the race. The “policy concern” and the ethnic targeting are, in practice, the same project.
That project sits alongside a legislative record that has already drawn fire from across the Armenian-American community. Per ANCA, Fine is a cosponsor of Congressional legislation that would direct U.S. weapons and assistance to the Aliyev regime in Baku, the same dictatorship that in September 2023 carried out the forced depopulation of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), driving more than 100,000 Indigenous Armenian Christians from their ancestral homeland in what human rights organizations have described as one of the largest single acts of ethnic cleansing of the 21st century.
The pressure on Fine has only intensified since Sunday. Armenian-Americans have served the United States in uniform, in the courts, in legislatures, and in Congress itself for well over a century, from the veterans of both World Wars to the governors, mayors, judges, and members of Congress who have represented their communities with distinction.
