During an appearance on Fox News Sunday with host Chris Wallace over the weekend, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) — who ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary — grovelingly ceded grand swathes of rhetorical ground to the ex-president and his voters. Rubio acknowledged that Trump “bears responsibility” for the recent rioting at the U.S. Capitol… but he complained that the impending second impeachment trial against Trump over his incitement of the insurrection will “stir it up again.” Rubio failed to meaningfully acknowledge, of course, that Trump already sowed vitriolic division across the country, and the impeachment proceedings represent an attempt at basic accountability for inciting deadly violence.
Rubio cowardly commented as follows:
‘I think the president bears responsibility for some of what happened. It was most certainly a foreseeable consequence of everything that was going on, and I think that’s widely understood, and maybe even better understood with the perspective of time. I think that’s separate from the notion of: Let’s revisit this all and stir it up again. The stories are still gonna be written; there’s criminal justice investigations that are gonna continue to move forward — all these things are still gonna happen. All I’m arguing is: We have some really important things to work on. You wanna really bring the country together and remember once again how we can get things done. It isn’t by uniformity on all the issues. It’s about working through a process that allows people with different points of view to debate all that and get to a solution.’
In follow-up comments, Rubio defended Trumpism to the point that he spoke acceptingly of people who “feel socially displaced, even like strangers in their own country,” which sounds like an attempt at defending racism. Would Rubio explain away Trump rally chants to “send… back” Congresswomen of color by saying that the chanters merely felt “socially displaced”? It’s called racism, Marco.
Claiming that Trump got “75 million” votes although his 2020 total actually rounds to 74 million, Rubio commented as follows:
‘The GOP is the party that nominated Donald Trump, and the reason why it did and ultimately got him elected — and he got 75 million votes — is because there are tens of millions of Americans that feel this economy isn’t working for people like them, that feel socially displaced, even like strangers in their own country, and who believe that both of the parties, at least traditionally, and all of politics doesn’t understand or care about any of this, that they don’t matter to people… Those factors… that’s what I hope we’ll be a party of.’
Check out his ridiculous comments below:
Marco Rubio makes it clear that he has no regrets about the Republican Party hitching its wagon to Trump. He'd do it all over again if he could. pic.twitter.com/nXJL9GqxeB
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2021
