Rubio says he continues to "do everything" he can to keep US support for Israel from becoming a partisan issue; he does that by suggesting President Biden's foreign policy decisions are colored by his worrying "about losing Minnesota and Michigan," and the pressure "from the pro-Hamas wing" of the party.
I think he's trying to have it both ways, still stick with Israel to some extent, but also do things that signal to these people and try to appease them...
He disagrees with Trump's statement that "Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed." He tried to talk his way through all of the ways someone can think about Israel, Netanyahu, and being Jewish, but it didn't really work. In the end, he said this is "an existential battle," and that "anyone who doesn't understand that is, frankly, whether they know it or not, an enemy of Israel."
Next topic? The vice-presidency. Rubio says anyone in public service "should be honored by the opportunity" to be the VP, and he made it clear he's not talked with Trump, anybody on his team, any family members, or anyone in his inner circle, and that Trump "has plenty of really good people to pick from."
Karl said he asked because well, you know, the "hang Mike Pence" stuff. Rubio's response?
I will tell you this, that when Donald Trump was president of the United States, this country was safer. It was more prosperous. We had -- we had relations, for example, in a part of the world that I care about called the Western Hemisphere that we’re very strong, we had a lot of good things done there.
This has nothing to do with hanging Mike Pence, of course, but he also said it was a better place when Trump was president, and
I would love to see him return to the White House compared to the guy who's there now, Joe Biden, who’s been a disaster economically. Look at the world, every single day we wake up to a new crisis, to a new conflict. Everything has gone on fire since the time Joe Biden took over.
"Everything" being Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Haiti, "we wake up every single day, terrorist attacks, 9 million people across the border." Karl was incredulous, but Rubio was adamant that it's all Joe Biden's fault, one way or another.
And when Karl played the classic 2016 clip of Rubio calling Trump "a con artist... he runs on this idea that he is fighting for the little guy, but he has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy... friends do not let friends vote for con artists," what was the response?
Yes, but so – so why didn't you play the clip of Kamala Harris basically insinuating that Joe Biden was a segregationist on the debate stage and she’s now his vice president?
Because Karl is interviewing Rubio not Harris, maybe?
Karl switched gears to the immunity issue and asked, "You don't agree with that, do you," referring to the "absolute immunity" claim that the Trump team claims.
Well, I don't – so, I don’t think that – on the case of immunity, there's two separate issues here. One is, can the president do anything? Can he go out and basically, you know, kill one of the members of the staff overnight inside the White House? Obviously, that's an absurd outcome and that's a common crime.
That's an argument Trump's attorneys seem to think is fine - that Trump could have SEAL Team 6 take out a political rival. Rubio then wondered about a "legitimate issue" we have to talk about,
especially after what we've seen the last three years and is, do we want to live in a country where basically the opponents of a president can – can – can extort them, can have leverage over them during their entire presidency and say, don’t worry, once you're out of office, we're going to prosecute you, we’re going to come after, we’re going to charge you for this crime, we’re going to charge you for that crime.
He said "we're living in a country now" where a president would have to think about having to be careful about what they do because if they upset someone, they'll get charged with a crime after they leave office. And that everything's a political prosecution and no one else has been treated this way before.
Of course, we've never had quite this good a con artist in office before, but that's lost on Rubio, it seems.
Finally, he doesn't think the folks who attacked the Capitol on January 6th are "absolute patriots like Trump says and should be pardoned, " but he sees a difference between the zip-tie guys and the people "who walked in through an open door," and that only the violent people should have been prosecuted.
... there are people that have been charged, in some cases egregiously charged, for simply walking in. Not – they didn't attack anybody.
And, by the way, "Why didn't they do that for the people who set all the fires in Portland?"
And with that, this veep interview was over.
