BUCK: We’ve got Senator Marco Rubio of the great state of Florida with us. Senator Rubio, appreciate you making the time, sir.
SEN. RUBIO: Thanks for having me on.
BUCK: So, last week you tweeted a Red Wave is coming. We’ve been talking about this wave for many months now. It felt like a couple of weeks ago it was maybe losing a little bit of momentum, but now the polls and I think the national sense is it may be moving back in our direction. Tell us what you think’s going on here, and how do we make sure that this wave shatters the collectivist lunacy of Fauciism, tax-and-spend Bidenism and all the rest of it?
SEN. RUBIO: Well, I think first and something you guys well understand is, you know, politics, political coverage these days is done by people who have narratives to push. So, it gets boring after a few months to write about how Biden is doing terrible and the Democrats are gonna get swamped; so, then there’s this effort to say we need a counternarrative, and that’s what you’re seeing now.
But eventually, especially after Labor Day in every one of these elections things settle down. Here’s the fundamental truth. And they can chirp all they want about this, that, or the other. Most Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, they’re not happy with the economy, they think America’s weaker and less safe, they think our streets are less safe. They think our policies are making us worse off, not better off.
And one party’s in charge of every branch of government. They’re in charge of the Congress, they’re in charge of the White House. And so, Americans logically are gonna conclude the only way to deal with everything going in the wrong direction is to replace the people who control the decisions that are being made right now. And I think that’s where we’re headed. Now, I can’t speak for every state in the country. I imagine it’s hard to build, you know, a Red Wave in some states around the country.
But in Florida, I mean, not just Republicans, but people who have any common sense are ready to go vote. They’re going to come out and they’re going to vote, and we have to make sure that that happens so we can at least — midterms are about checks and balances, and right now there are no checks in balances in Washington on the lunacy of the far left.
CLAY: Speaking of the far left, the pictures from the Mar-a-Lago raid are out. We haven’t been focusing on this a ton, but I’m curious, Senator Rubio, what you think about the Department of Justice, which says, “Oh, these are such top secret, dangerous documents,” that they’re staging photographs from inside of Mar-a-Lago to be able to release. What’s your thoughts on this story? Is it gonna go away? What should Republicans do, coming down the home stretch here of the midterms?
I mean, it’s one of the things — it’s one of the reasons why the Justice Department has long said, you know, we don’t prosecute people three months from an election. We’ll wait ’til after the election ’cause we don’t want to look political. It’s one of the reasons why they don’t discuss even the existence of investigations with the press. That’s not been the case here. It’s been leak after leak after leak. We don’t know if the leaks are true or not, but clearly someone in the Justice Department is telling things to the media to try to shake the narrative.
And then you have the pictures that are part of that filing, and then there’s the more fundamental challenge, and that is if in fact the information that was being improperly stored, ’cause that’s the allegation, the information is improperly stored at Mar-a-Lago, if in fact it rises to that level, then the congressional committees in charge of counterintelligence should have been informed of that. We were never, ever — and we’ve asked in a bipartisan way, we’ve asked, tell us what this stuff is that you claim is so sensitive and so serious.
And they have yet to do it and they never did it previously when they have an obligation to come in and tell. They tell us stuff all the time, the most sensitive information available to the U.S. government is we’re briefed on all the time. Never once been told that there’s some massive counterintelligence threat right underneath our nose. And so, to me, I just think a lot of this continues to create at least a perception that it is deeply politicized, and it does tremendous harm to our institutions, especially important ones, so important to the country like the FBI and the Justice Department.
CLAY: Not to mention you know about secure documents and intelligence. Given the fact that the FBI investigated Hillary Clinton and then cleared her when we know that she had classified documents, have you seen anything that suggests that what Trump has done is way worse than Hillary Clinton, which would justify prosecution when her classified documents and email, which theoretically would have been easier to spread, I would think, than hard copies, were just waved off as not prosecutable by the FBI?
SEN. RUBIO: Well, in her case, they actually destroyed the evidence. Right? They actually destroyed telephones and wiped and cleaned out computers. It was sitting there on a device that was connected to the internet, which means that it could have been accessed that way and potentially was. We don’t know. I mean, that’s never been discussed. So, in some ways I’d say that is far worse in regards to not just the possession of this information but the way in which it was destroyed so that no investigation could possibly find it.
And here what you have at its core, if taken at face value, let’s say that everything they’re saying is true, what they’re really arguing is that classified documents are being improperly stored in a facility that is not constructed or built for proper storage of classified information. I mean, that’s at the core of their allegation. In the case of Hillary Clinton, it’s you’re in possession of highly classified information, and it’s sitting on a device that’s connected to the internet. And when we tried to go find it, we learned that you physically destroyed the phones and used software to wipe out the computers.
SEN. RUBIO: Well, I think there’s two major differences. I think the first is, I actually get things done. She’s been in Congress for six years. She calls her Chief Demings ’cause she wants people to know that it’s been 12 years since been a police chief. She’s been in Congress for six years after — and she’s run for multiple offices. She spent a decade trying to get into politics. So, she’s been in Congress six years. She’s done nothing.
She’s never passed a bill. She has no signature or major achievement of any — she has no achievement of any kind — there’s nothing to show for six years in Congress. What she’s been is a rubber stamp. She votes with Nancy Pelosi a hundred percent of the time. Not even The Squad does that, okay? And she’s been a rubber stamp for Pelosi and this radical agenda. I ask people to compare that to my record.
I’ve got more meaningful things done in the last six years that anyone in the Senate. I don’t say that — the Vanderbilt University of Virginia center for effective law making says that. YouGov says that. They’ve ranked me the most effective member of the U.S. Senate. I got the PPP program that saved millions of small businesses and jobs across this country, not one, but two VA accountability acts, changes in laws towards Hong Kong after China took it over, the law that bans the import of products made by slave labor, the increase from the Xinjiang region of China.
You know, it’s why I’m sanctioned by the Chinese government. I mean, the list goes on and on. It’s a very long list. I mean, I’ve gotten real things done. Things built on common sense. And, by the way, bipartisan things. Because you can’t pass anything in the Senate that isn’t bipartisan. So, that’s the first thing. I think the second thing that’s really important to point out and is our differences is — and it ties to the first — is that you look at the agenda, she is gonna do whatever Chuck Schumer tells her.
It almost is irrelevant what her personal views are on these issues. As we’ve learned very recently, when the Democrats crack the whip on their members, they all fall in line and vote for whatever they ask for irrespective of their personal views. So, if people want Chuck Schumer to be their next U.S. senator, then Val Demings is gonna do that for you. I’m not. Look. I’ve voted against my own leadership many times when I felt it was not in the best interests of the country or the United States.
She has never done it, and she’s not gonna do it in the Senate. But I need people’s help. ‘Cause she’s raising a ton of cash. You Know, This Act Blue, all these liberal groups around the country, they’re flooding her campaign with money. So, if people can give, I ask them to go on my website, MarcoRubio.com, ’cause I can’t get outspent three to one here. We’ve gotta get the word out about this stuff.
CLAY: Senator Rubio, I know you are a monster Dolphins fan. You’ve been talking about a lot of serious subjects here. How are the Dolphins going to do? You’ve got Jaylen Waddle paired now with Tyreek Hill, that is an incredible combo. What are the Dolphins gonna do this year?
SEN. RUBIO: Well, let me tell you what I did this year. I have no expectations, that way my hopes cannot be dashed. Now, my eyes can see, you know, you probably have the fastest receiving corps maybe in the history of the NFL with Waddle and Tyreek Hill who, by the way, is not just fast, he’s a great player.
CLAY: Yep.
SEN. RUBIO: And Waddle has the opportunity to be the same and then you’ve got probably the fastest running back in the league in Mostert. So, it’s a much faster team. They have a unique design. You know, and I think it’s a system that’s perfectly tailored for what Shula did very well, remember, when he was in Alabama. He was an RPO quarterback that — I mean, he can throw the ball deep. All that stuff about him not throwing the ball deep is silly.
But where he really excels, where he’s elite at is his accuracy, ’cause he puts the ball in the place where the guys who can catch and run can catch and run. So, all that feels really good, and they bring back the same defense as last year. But these guys in the NFL, I mean, if the worst team in the NFL played the best team in the NFL 10 times, the worst team would win at least three of those games, maybe four, but at least three. That’s how closely matched this stuff is. So, you know, sometimes you just don’t get your hopes up. But look, I’m excited about it. I’m waiting to see what happens —
SEN. RUBIO: I like both the Beverly Hills Cop, the second one came out in the nineties, but I like them both. I actually think Eddie Murphy has not been given the credit he deserves for his role in the Shrek movies, which unfortunately I had to watch ’cause my kids were growing up —
CLAY: He is really good as Donkey.
BUCK: Did you see that pivot? That is a world class pivot from the senator, by the way.
CLAY: Did you just go off the board and go with Eddie Murphy in Shrek movies as his best performance?
SEN. RUBIO: Let me tell you something. That’s even harder. ‘Cause the voice now has to do anything. You’re not in charge of the animation; so the voice has to really carry the day. And so, for him, I mean, it’s phenomenal. And, by the way, let me just mention this. His late brother, Charlie Murphy…that guy was incredible, the guy who used to be on the original Chappelle shows. He was a really funny guy. Unfortunately, he died, you know, very young —
CLAY: What’s your favorite Chappelle show skit? Do you have one? The Charlie Murphy one I’m thinking of that is so good is the prince playing basketball, where — I mean that is one of the funniest —
SEN. RUBIO: 9 Rick James one, remember the Rick James one?
CLAY: Oh, yeah.
BUCK: Yeah.
SEN. RUBIO: You know, gosh, there’s so many. You gotta be so careful about them because none of them are politically correct, you know what I mean? And that’s what makes Chappelle so unique.
BUCK: Oh, of course.
SEN. RUBIO: But, I mean, there is a bunch of them. I’ve always chuckled that — remember Black Bush, which is the one right after — during the Gulf War period? And I think, if I’m not mistaken, who was Tony Blair, somebody played the role of Tony Blair in that skit? Jamie Foxx. That’s who it was.
SEN. RUBIO: Listen, no, I think Beverly Hills Cop, both of them.
BUCK: Yes.
SEN. RUBIO: Not that Coming to America was bad, but I like both of them.
BUCK: Victory for Sexton.
CLAY: I think you’re wrong on this one.
BUCK: Strong interview before but now it’s been a fantastic interview. Senator Marco Rubio of the great state of Florida, sir, we always appreciate you making the time, and good luck to you, and we look forward to you doing more great things in the Senate next year.
SEN. RUBIO: Yeah. Thank you, guys. Thanks for having me on.
BUCK: Anytime.
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