Feb. 29, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:24:40
3217 The Truth About Marco Rubio
Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio is a United States Senator from Florida who previously served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. As Super Tuesday approaches - Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump compete for the Republican Presidential nomination. During an primary election where illegal immigration and rebellion against the Republican establishment are driving votes and popular opinion - Marco Rubio remains a polarizing figure to conservatives. Infamous for his role in the Gang of Eight legislation, Rubio has been the subject of criticism - but what is The Truth About Marco Rubio?Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/truth-about-marco-rubioFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, this is Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Marco Rubio, fresh-faced Cuban-American aspirant for President of the United States, is a very fascinating and intriguing political figure in American life.
There is so much that he informs and reflects at the American populace, its hopes and its dreams, nay, in fact, also its fears, that it's well worth peeling back the onion layers to find out what is at the heart of this narrative and why he is such a sharply divisive So,
he's 44 years old, and of course he's running for President of the United States.
His backstory is fascinating, and he's like many of the political aspirants who come from humble origins.
He talks a lot about his backstory.
So his Senate biography stated, quote, In 1971, Marco was born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who came to America following Fidel Castro's takeover.
He has himself claimed to be the son of exiles, which, of course, the Cuban-Americans forced to leave their beloved island after the thug Fidel Castro took power.
The fact of the matter is not quite the dominoes of sympathy that we would expect from this narrative, the reality.
is that Rubio's parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two and one-half years before Castro's forces overthrew the Cuban government, assuming power on New Year's Day 1959.
In the year Rubio's parents actually arrived in Florida, the Marxist dictator aspirant was in fact Mexico plotting his return to Cuba.
Now, when confronted about this, he says, I'm going off the oral history of my family.
All of these documents and passports are not things that I carried around with me.
Now, in 2006, on the eve of his rise to Speaker of the Florida House, Rubio told an audience that, quote, In January of 1959, a thug named Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, and countless Cubans were forced to flee and came and come here, many, most, here to America.
When they arrived, they were welcomed by the most compassionate people, On all of the earth.
So, it's been a very powerful story for him in terms of his connections with the Cuban exiles in Miami, but it does not accord with the facts.
Also, presenting a somewhat challenging narrative to those concerned about illegal immigrants into the United States, Rubio's grandfather was an illegal immigrant to the United States, according to a book coming out shortly.
And again, as usual, the sources for all of this will be below.
Please check them out.
So, Rubio's grandfather came to America, didn't do very well, reportedly left the United States for Cuba, and then flew back to the States without a visa and was booked by a U.S. immigration official who stated, quote, He was ordered, deported, but instead he hung out illegally in Miami.
He apparently resurfaced in 1967 to petition for permanent residency.
Now, even though...
Rubio's grandfather had been in the U.S. since 1962.
The form he filled out then states that he'd been a Cuban refugee since February 1965.
And again, this is according to the author of the upcoming book.
I guess which reinforces the point that it can be a little bit difficult to vet immigrants without papers.
So let's get into some of the details.
We're going to spend a little bit of time on the financial history of Marco Rubio.
I know, I know.
It's a topic that perhaps may not sound as gripping as a vice on your finger, but it is actually very important.
This guy's running as a conservative.
He's supposed to know how to handle finances.
He's supposed to be responsible with his money.
And he, of course, wants to be somewhat more or less in charge of the financial structure of the United States government.
Let's see how he's done prior to, right?
Is there a thin guy or a fat guy on the cover of the diet book he's flogging?
So in 2000, Rubio was employed by Rudin McCloskey, a law firm that paid him $72,000 a year.
Of course, that's his back when $72,000 a year was actually quite a bit of money.
After he was elected to the Florida legislator via a special election in the same year, we'll get to that in a second, Rubio reported a net worth Zero.
$150,000 in student loan debt and $30,000 in assorted credit card and retail debt.
That's a lot of student loan debt.
Boy, I wonder if Bernie Sanders had been running then, promising.
Anyway, we'll see.
Since the Florida legislative session was only about 60 days a year, Rubio was able to continue working in this private law practice, which raised concerns about possible conflict of interest.
These concerns will be raised again and again with varying degrees of certainty as we go through the presentation.
In 2001, Rubio accepted a new position at the Miami law firm Becker and Polyakov for $93,000 a year, so up from 72.
Not bad.
So, according to Becker and Poliakoff real estate lawyer Perry Adair, It was as simple as saying, Marco, who should I call in this place about this issue?
Marco knew the staff everywhere.
He'd been in politics all his life.
It can be hard to get meetings with local government officials, and it can be hard to get answers.
Marco was a good guy to have around because he could help you get an answer that would otherwise have taken two months.
So he's connected.
He's a hub.
He's like the internet of political favoritism, and a lot of people wanted to dial in.
Former state legislator, lawyer, lobbyist Alan Becker said, I was paying him accordingly.
If he was devoting 100% to the law business, he would have been paid more because he was worth it.
So, yeah, he's pretty well connected into the local government.
And of course, when you're trying to do business in Florida, pretty much anywhere in the United States, being dialed into local government is pretty essential to get anything done.
Despite an income of $90,000, Rubio reported financial difficulties requiring him and his wife to sell one of their two vehicles and move, along with their young daughter, into the home of his mother-in-law.
Interesting side note, Rubio's wife Jeanette was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, so you have two marriage partners who both seem to need a An interesting element to the quick rise of Rubio's political career was a Florida constitutional amendment implementing term limits.
Rubio's special election about 10 months before the regular elections coincided with a mass exodus of term limited lawmakers and put him in the position to advance ahead of the new legislators.
So a little gap opened up and he raced through a little bit ahead of just about everybody else.
So Mike Fasano worked, of course, with Rubio, and after Mike resigned as Florida House Majority Leader in September 2001, he said of Rubio, it wasn't, how's everything going?
It was, can you help me become Majority Leader?
He wasn't thinking about what good he could do for the legislature, for his party, and for his constituents.
He was thinking about what good he, that is Rubio, could do for himself.
Now, although Rubio didn't get the position then, in late 2002, he was appointed majority leader.
In 2003, Rubio was dubbed House Speaker in Waiting, and House Speaker is one of the most powerful positions in Florida government.
Later this year, Rubio bought his mother-in-law's home in West Miami for $175,000, putting no money down.
So, yeah, he seems to have got his hands on some cash as he moved up in politics.
Now, according to Florida Democrat Dan Gelber, quote, As a speaker-in-waiting, you don't do a lot of legislating on your own.
Your job is to tow the company line for the years before your speakership, because you expect everybody after you to tow your line.
And in fairness, that's what Marco did.
In June 2004, Rubio took a position with law firm Broad& Castle at $300,000 a year.
So, uh...
That's really a massive increase from the 90,000 just a year or two previously.
Nearly three times his previous salary as a lawyer.
His rapid increase in salary, along with his new speaker in waiting position, continued to raise conflict of interest concerns.
Reports show that Rubio's outside pay grew proportionately more than any of the nine other Florida House speakers who served between 1997 and 2014.
Broad and Castle was known for its real estate litigation and government relations practice.
So, I mean, again, he's a networking guy.
He's a guy who knows everyone who can get things done.
And, of course, that's worth a lot in the modern American economy.
Marco Rubio said, Rubio campaign spokesman Todd Harris said,
quote, Unlike Congress, the Florida legislature is a part-time body, meaning virtually every legislator makes their living from outside employment.
When Marco was hired at Broad and Castle, he was in line to become the first Cuban-American House Speaker in Florida history.
That gave him an enormous profile, along with some very marketable experiences and qualifications.
Former Florida pre-Rubio half-speaker Johnny Bird, quote, My memory of Broad and Castle is that they were a really rapidly rising firm at that time.
They were one of the big firms in Florida that was doing a lot of government work.
Other members of the Florida House do not see their salary triple overnight.
I feel confident in saying that if he had not been selected to the speaker-designate, his salary would not have shot up to $300,000.
Now, why are we talking about all of this?
Marco Rubio puts himself forward as a free-market guy, which means not using government connections, government pull, government networking, in order to up your own salary.
That's crapitalism, crony capitalism, it's...
Thank you.
hearing free market advice from people who've spent a considerable amount of time as entrepreneurs in the free market, not selling their political pull to law firms who wish to gain potentially unjust benefits for others.
In 2005, the Rubio family completed the purchase of a new $550,000 home and within weeks of the purchase, borrowed $135,000 through a home equity line from the politically connected Miami-based bank U.S. Century.
After the house was reappraised, That's $735,000.
Now, this was during a housing boom.
This is a year or two before the crash.
Nonetheless, $550,000 to $735,000.
That's almost a quarter million dollar increase in value.
And, well, that's quite a lot.
And are there favors going on?
There's never a smoking gun.
That's the whole point of these backroom deals, if they exist.
But those kinds of numbers are hard to replicate without influence, let's say.
At this point, the Rubios owned three homes and saw their liabilities skyrocket to a million dollars from $330,000 in just one year.
So, tripling of their liabilities.
Financial advisor Harold Davensky said this was someone that was living financially dangerously.
In 2006, Rubio was responsible for overseeing the Republican election effort, but it was a massive failure.
Under Rubio's leadership, the Democrats won seven new seats and broke the 16-year streak of Republicans holding a supermajority in the Florida House of Representatives.
Florida House Democrat strategist Steve Shale said, In 2007, Rubio finally assumed the designated office of House Speaker and almost immediately relinquished significant power.
Rubio gave committee chairman...
The ability to determine which subcommittees would vet legislation and which all but decided which bills would pass or fail.
So this looks admirable on the surface.
Look, he's delegating.
He's handing out the power.
On the other hand, he obviously had his sights set on the highest office from the beginning.
This way, he can avoid political controversy and he passes the buck to the committee chairman.
There aren't going to be decisions which come back to haunt him in his future goals for political power.
Marco Rubio said, I wanted the house to operate differently than it had in the past when the speaker had so much authority that members could always assign the blame for any failure to the fourth floor code for the speaker's office.
Under my speakership, committee chairmen would have more power than ever before but a greater share of responsibility as well and greater accountability.
See, if they're having greater accountability, that means Marco Rubio is having less.
That's a fairly good political move if you're seeking higher office.
Former Florida House Majority Leader Mike Fasano said, quote, When confronted with an issue, with a problem, he pretty much would throw it in the laps of his staff and want to take the road of non-controversy.
To me, that is not a leader.
Florida Republican J.C. Plannis said, quote, There is a certain safety to his manner of being.
He is not necessarily a risk-taker.
Marco is more of a politician than he is a policy wonk.
Now, in 2006, as Florida governor Jeb Bush's term was ending, Rubio fired almost a dozen veteran staffers, spending $2 million to hire Bush's advisors and aides.
In one example, Rubio paid Chief of Staff Richard Corcoran over $175,000, or $46,000 more than the Florida governor's salary.
The political fiscal conservative also spent more than $500,000 on renovations, including building a private cafeteria for lawmakers.
But don't worry, he'll help the government uncover waste, fraud and abuse.
Now, of course, when Rubio wasn't planning buying houses or building cafeterias or spending state money to aid in his financial future, he aimed at pushing a tax swap plan that would eliminate property taxes and replace the revenue with additional sales taxes.
Now, of course, he owns a bunch of houses.
Now, of course, when you buy a house, the price is discounted according to property tax liabilities.
And so if you remove property tax liabilities from houses, the value of your existing houses will go up.
So that's just a financial reality that was part of the whole equation.
The plan received national attention and was used as an opportunity to raise...
Rubio's national profile, but ultimately was criticized for negatively impacting the poor and failed to pass.
Well, the poor pay property taxes, of course, through the increases in rent, because when you rent an apartment, the property tax is built in.
And often property tax per rental apartment for the poor is higher per square foot than bigger houses, even though, of course, it's much cheaper in terms of services to service electricity and plumbing and so on to service an apartment.
But people feel that, you know, sales taxes is more visible tax on the poor than property taxes.
So it failed to pass.
Marco Rubio said, for better or worse, property tax reform would be my legacy.
And it was incomplete to put it charitably.
Thank you.
Now, we're going to meet this fellow, Norman Breyman, and he's going to show up a couple of times here.
He has been referred to as Marco Rubio's sugar daddy.
He contributed $255,000 to the advocacy group lobbying for these changes to replace a property tax with a sales tax, by far its largest donor.
So, Lobbyist Bob Levy said, quote, I can give you the agenda for every speaker I can remember.
For Marco, there was no agenda.
How important could it have been if people don't remember?
And we're going to hit this theme a few times.
We've got good evidence for it that there is not a core set of principles that inform Marco Rubio's political maneuverings, but rather what people want to hear, what can I get away with, saying different things to different people, changing his mind or changing his perspectives without...
He is a bit of a, let's just say, flexible political animal, to put it as nicely as possible.
Florida House Democratic strategist Steve Shale said of Marco Rubio, quote, Marco's biggest liability is that he is a young ambitious guy.
If there's a thing that young ambitious guys have to watch out for, it's being overly cautious, overly scared, worried about making that misstep.
And Rubio at times has let that ambition get in the way of progress.
Now this is an interesting distinction between free market, which the free market often rewards boldness and vision and the willingness to take action.
Well-calculated risks.
But in the political world, if you're heading for a higher office, you kind of want to leave that foggy, ghostly trail behind you so that no one can quite figure out what you stand for.
They can then project their hopes onto what you'll do.
And because he's always been very ambitious, he's had a reluctance, I would argue, as this guy's saying, to really make a stand on things.
Now, Rubio also made a $200,000 profit selling a house that he owned to the family member of a lobbyist who was actively pursuing a change in state insurance rules.
Rubio had been a holdout on changing the rules, but voted for the measure shortly after the home sale.
And again, please understand, there's never a smoking gun in these kinds of situations.
But if you get enough of these kinds of situations together, it kind of...
Creates somewhat of a pattern.
In 2008, during his final months of his term as House Speaker, Rubio's income rose yet again.
This time, the result of a new part-time teaching job at Florida International University, paying Rubio $69,000 a year.
The New York Times later reported that the university received $100,000 from Norman Brayman, remember we talked about him before, specifically related to Rubio's position.
So, get $100,000 for this position, which is then filled by Rubio.
Brayman is a noted Rubio supporter, as we'll come back to more than a few times in this presentation.
So, Rubio's annual income grew from $72,000 in the year 2000 to $414,000 in 2008, when his two-year speakership ended.
Had he become that much of a better lawyer, that much of a better person?
This is during a time when he's building a young family, which is quite time-consuming if you're a good parent.
What did he have that made him so valuable?
I don't know.
Diversity candidate plus political connections.
Oh, it's Florida.
Now, 80% of Rubio's total income during this time came from Florida law firms that lobby state and local governments.
His legislative salary was only $29,000 a year.
So, yeah.
Want to get something done in the government?
Rubio is your guy.
He's plugged in.
He can get things done.
This is your free market conservative.
It makes my mouth dry.
When Rubio left the Florida House in 2008, his net worth was only $8,300, according to his financial disclosure forms, including more than $900,000 in debt.
So, yeah, he's making over $400,000, more than $900,000 in debt.
An independent analysis of Rubio's financial disclosures showed that he earned $2.38 million from 1998 to 2008, but ended up with an estimated net worth of only $53,000, which was actually more than he personally reported.
So his savings rate during this unprecedented rise in his salary was only 2%.
After leaving office, Rubio became a consultant for local public hospitals.
Why?
Why?
Who knows?
Is he an expert in hospitals?
I don't know.
It doesn't seem to be, but anyway, so he signed contracts worth $102,000.
With Jackson Hospital Systems and $96,000 with Miami Children's Hospital.
The hospitals are very much dependent upon government power, government control of competition in the neighborhood and subsidies and you name it.
So did he have value to them because of his political connections?
Well, I'm not sure that he was an expert in medical or hospital administration, but anyway.
During his successful U.S. Senate campaign in 2010, Rubio was criticized for usage of a Republican Party credit card for personal expenses.
$1,000 to repair a family vehicle, $135 at a barbershop.
Hey, we've all been there.
And about $3,000 on flights.
He did reimburse the party for the charges, apologized for the mistake.
He does have some very close friends, if not best friends, of somewhat questionable character.
He was a mentor and best friends.
To David Rivera, a Republican from Florida, they came up together in the state legislature.
They went in together in a house in Tallahassee, right?
And that went into foreclosure when they failed to pay the mortgage.
Now, Rivera, who once forced an opponent's campaign truck off the side of an interstate highway with his car, I guess mirroring certain people from Manitowoc County, He was at one point under state and federal investigations for a spate of financial corruption allegations, mostly focusing on nepotistic lobbying.
So, he's got some friends of questioned character.
Rubio had a stake in a rental property which went into foreclosure after being five months behind on mortgage payments.
He ultimately was forced to sell at a loss.
Marco Rubio, quote, Yes, I have debts, but my debts are not some exotic instruments contrived to support my extravagant lifestyle.
They consist almost entirely of two things, my mortgages on my two homes and my student loan from law school.
In 2012, Rubio was paid $800,000 to write his first book, An American Son, a memoir, which focused on growing up as the son of Cuban immigrants.
At this time, Rubio purchased a 24-foot luxury speedboat for $80,000 and his wife leased a $50,000...
2015 Audi Q7. So, yeah, they're stepping up a little bit in the world.
We'll get to how well that book did in just a little while.
According to 2013 data, Rubio placed 456 out of 538 in roll calls rankings of Capitol Hill's wealthiest lawmakers with a net worth of negative $140,000.
That's a year after he was paid $800,000.
In 2014, Rubio made $174,000 as a U.S. Senator, $5,000 from rental property, and $52,000 from book royalties, as well as, of course, a university teaching position.
So despite this, I guess you could say, relatively healthy income, Rubio made what is typically viewed as a desperate financial maneuver.
He cashed out over $68,000 worth of retirement funds, paying, of course, an estimated tax penalty of $24,000.
Economist Lawrence Kotlikofft, quote, It means that he is probably on some level living above his means because he is borrowing against his future.
Marco Rubio said, my refrigerator broke down.
That was $3,000.
I had to replace the air conditioning unit in her home.
My kids all go to school and they're getting closer to college and schools getting more expensive.
Florida Democratic strategist Christian Ulvert said, most average Americans are not buying $3,000 refrigerators.
Most families don't have the luxury of sending their kids to private schools.
I know.
Water can be pricey.
The senator's wife, Jeanette Rubio, also works with billionaire businessman and philanthropist Norman Brahman.
Remember Norman?
He's back.
He's back.
A long-time supporter of the senator's political activities.
Jeanette Rubio's event planning business does work for the Brahmin Family Foundation, and her revenue comes exclusively from her work for the Brahmin Foundation.
Now, foundations, of course, charitable organizations, they collect money, concentrate and find good causes, and then spend the money.
And they're supposed to have tiny overhead, you know, the vast majority of the money is supposed to flow through to the recipients of the charity.
In 2013, Jeanette Rubio was paid at least $54,000 by the Brahmin Family Foundation.
In 2013, the most recent year for which Form 990s are available, the Brahmin Family Foundation gave $250 in charitable contributions.
The foundation also reported $149,237 in miscellaneous airplane trips for charitable purposes.
I think that this is explainable by the fact that they got a lot of donations in pennies and then joined global warming alarmist Leonardo DiCaprio for individual flights to fly each penny out to its recipients.
So it adds up somehow.
Norman Brahman said, quote, he's talking about Rubio's wife, the wonderful thing about what she does, it's not just the advice, it's also making sure that the funding that we provide is utilized properly.
So, he's basically saying that, I don't know, of the hundreds of thousands of dollars we take in, the $250 we actually pay out is utilized properly.
The Tampa Bay Times reported, quote, that year, Jeanette Rubio accompanied her husband on an official trip to the Middle East.
A news release stated that she was traveling at, quote, no taxpayer expense, and Rubio's office said she was traveling in concert with her work for the Brahmin charity.
We're told Mrs.
Rubio took one other trip that year flying with the family to Boston for a project involving Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
So, apparently you need to fly to the Middle East to figure out how to give away $250.
So Brahman has also donated approximately $6 million to efforts supporting Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign.
Politico wrote, Brahman is both a benefactor and a friend to Rubio, and their close relationship dates back to when the now-presidential candidate was ascending the ranks of the state legislature.
Over dinners at Brahman's Indian Creek Island mansion, which is adorned with priceless artwork and Civil War artifacts, the two bonded, over everything from their shared love of football to their affinity for Israel.
After Rubio was elected to the Senate in 2010, a race into which Brahmin and his wife Irma poured nearly $10,000, the two families traveled together to Israel.
The New York Times wrote, quote, Mr.
Rubio has steered taxpayer funds to Mr.
Brahman's favorite causes, successfully pushing for an $80 million state grant to finance a genomics center at a private university and securing $5 million for cancer research at a Miami institute, for which Mr.
Brahman is a major donor.
See, people with lots of money are usually not that done with money, and this guy gives millions of dollars Supporting Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign, what is he expecting in return?
Well, he's already been paid back quite a lot.
Pushing for an $80 million state grant, that is a huge amount of money.
So, you buy the politicians and you get access to state funds.
Everybody knows how it works.
Rubio, speaking about his financial ties to Brahman, quote, What is the conflict?
I don't ever recall Norman Brahman ever asking for anything for himself or anything like that.
that.
It was nothing.
Jeanette Rubio's business has also had its own controversies, including a failure to pay annual business licensing fees to the city of West Miami, despite nine written notices and repeated phone calls.
Yeah.
He's got a high-flying husband.
Why would she have rules?
Marco Rubio has also been criticized for appointing his wife as the treasurer of his political action committee and hiring relatives to fill positions in and around the government offices he controlled.
This PAC treasurer, Rubio's relatives involved, also failed to report $34,000 of contributions in an 18-month period.
The Federal Election Commission also repeatedly cited Rubio's campaign, fining it over $9,000 for an estimated $210,000 in improper donations, many of which violated contribution limits.
And this is the guy who's going to rescue the American economy with integrity, free market accountability, responsibility, and restraining from overspending.
Rubio has confessed, quote, a lack of bookkeeping skills and, end quote, imperfect accounting system, and has also commented, quote, we have a country that borrows too much money.
If you allow politicians to spend money, they'll do it.
I think he was just saying that to the mirror, I'm not sure.
Immediately prior to the release of this presentation, Rubio also released additional financial declarations.
His income ranged from a little over $276,000 to a little over $938,000 as a senator.
Quite a wide range for a fixed income salary as a senator.
It was again reported that the majority of Rubio's income came from profits and royalties related to his two books.
However, the most recent book, his American Dreams, Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone, only sold 2,000 copies in its first month and never exceeded that amount thereafter.
So to compare that, within the first month...
Ben Carson's A Perfect Union sold 126,000 copies.
Donald Trump's Crippled America sold 69,000 copies.
And Ted Cruz's A Time for Truth sold 39,000 copies.
So let's turn to immigration.
And immigration and Marco Rubio's, we have to use the plural, positions on immigration are really at the core of why he is I am strongly against amnesty.
The most important thing we need to do is enforce our existing laws.
We have existing immigration laws that are not being adequately enforced.
Nothing will make it harder to enforce the existing laws if you reward people who broke them.
It demoralizes people who are going through the legal process.
It's a very clear signal of why go through the legal process if you can accomplish the same thing if you go through the illegal process.
And number two, it demoralizes the people enforcing the laws.
I am not...
And I will never support any effort to grant blanket legalization or amnesty to folks who have entered state in this country illegally.
So that's a pretty ironclad statement just over half a decade ago.
Rubio criticized Florida Governor Charlie Crist, claiming, quote, an earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty.
That illegal seeking citizenship should return to their homeland.
And that if you grant amnesty as the governor proposes that we do in any form, whether it's the back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America.
So, you know, thundering against any idea of amnesty and making sure that the immigration laws are enforced.
Very strong.
So, Rubio's anti-amnesty position was one of the central promises of his Senate campaign.
And once elected, he violated the trust of Tea Party conservatives by working on the DREAM Act he campaigned against, staffing his office with strong pro-amnesty individuals and later spearheading the infamous Gang of Eight amnesty bill.
The level of this betrayal can scarcely be overstated in how angry people got about it.
But to some degree, it comes out of political correctness because he's Hispanic and It's like, let's use him as the human shield to deal with Hispanic immigration.
We need a Hispanic, otherwise we're going to be called racist.
So he exploited that thirst for a politically correct human shield to deal with Hispanic illegal immigration and, like all affirmative action, fear of being called a racist candidate.
He probably didn't feel a lot of necessity to keep his word.
Now this wasn't Rubio's first pro-illegal immigrant position.
In 2006, Rubio supported a bill in the Florida House, which included provisions allowing in-state tuition for illegal aliens, and was praised for blocking legislation concerning illegal immigrants, namely a bill to ban sanctuary cities.
So, again, we have him 2010, very strong on blocking illegal immigration in 2006, supportive of it, and then, you know, it's the revolving door of what people want to hear right now for me to pilfer their votes like a pickpocket grabbing your watch.
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Arturo Vargas said, quote, He, as a speaker, kept many of those legislations looking to clamp down on illegal immigrants from coming up to a vote.
We were very proud of his work as Speaker of the House.
Hey look, an ethnic group with in-group preferences.
Never seen that before.
After Mitt Romney was defeated by President Barack Obama, Rubio aligned himself with the Gang of Eight.
Rubio's clear role was to use his Tea Party credibility to sell the Gang of Eight bill to the conservative movement.
Marco Rubio said, quote, We are going to get the toughest enforcement measures in the history of this country.
Bill O'Reilly said, quote, Senator Rubio told me on the phone today that it would be at least 13 years, 13, before people in the country illegally right now could gain full legal working status and even longer to achieve citizenship.
The truth was that illegal immigrants gained legal working status immediately.
With citizenship provisions beginning five years later for the Dreamers, who could then eventually obtain green cards for their foreign relatives.
So again, you have the public-facing statements, tough, tough, tough on immigration, and privately doing the exact opposite of what most people who were concerned with this issue sent him to the legislator actually to do.
When the true nature of the bill was discovered, Rubio obfuscated and denied the claims.
Illegals would have been given social security numbers and become eligible to receive earned income tax credits and the additional child tax credit, a massive subsidy to those who broke the law.
The enforcement mechanisms included in the bill were toothless and ultimately left to the discretion of the Obama administration, which is where you get this executive amnesty and all of that coming from.
It was originally said that illegals would, quote, have to pay taxes and undergo a background check.
But since they have no on-paper tax liability, there would have been no enforceable back taxes.
An amendment to actually require back taxes was voted down in committee.
Concerning background checks, the bill allowed amnesty to be granted to criminals and known gang members, including drug traffickers, sexual abusers, prostitutes, deportation fugitives, and those who had been previously deported.
When criticism of all of this reached a boiling point, Rubio announced that he would fix the bill to the satisfaction of concerned conservatives.
While actually working to ensure no changes were made to the bill.
The Gang of Eight routinely met in secret to decide which amendments they would support or oppose, and this was confirmed when Senator Chuck Schumer was caught on a hot microphone discussing the formulated plans.
Rubio himself voted against amendments to require the border to be secure before granting amnesty, require the completion of 700 miles of border fence before any illegal aliens could get a green card, require the full completion of an anti-terror initiative recommended by the 9-11 Commission, and require the full completion of an anti-terror initiative recommended by the 9-11 Commission, and create a student visa national security registration system for screening to students from
These are all things wanted by a lot of conservatives, which he voted against amendments to achieve.
President Obama would have also been given the power to expand refugee resettlement.
Rubio promised that the bill would lead to a merit-based immigration system.
However, this bill would have issued 33 million green cards in 10 years, with a maximum of 2.5 million of those being merit-based, and also allowing for unlimited family-based chain migration.
Even within the so-called merit-based system, low-skilled and family-based immigrants were strongly favored.
And people wonder why Donald Trump is a phenomenon.
Rubio's office claimed that,"...the size of the future population of the United States will not be significantly impacted by this legislation, but it allowed 46 million new immigrants by 2033, growing the foreign-born population by $24 million in a 10-year time frame." For those outside the US or outside the political continuum that we're examining here,
immigrants from third world countries overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
So this is a double betrayal for conservatives.
Not only did he promise to restrict illegal immigration and control immigration and then backtrack completely on those promises, but he's importing people Who, once they're in, will overwhelmingly vote for Democrats and thus destroy any capacity for the Republican Party to survive.
It's a basic fact that Ronald Reagan, if he were trying to get elected in the here and now, would never have been elected because of the minority vote.
It would have gone to the Democrats and his opponent would have gotten in.
What he wants to do would spell...
The actual end of the Republican Party as it currently stands.
And that is really shocking to a lot of Republicans.
Marco Rubio said, quote, And then they don't qualify for any federal benefits.
This is an important point.
No federal benefits, no food stamps, no welfare, no Obamacare.
However, the benefits cost...
In the proposed legislation was estimated to run into the trillions of US dollars.
So you're asking Republicans to import a lot of people who will vote against the party that they love and will cost them a huge amount in taxpayer funding.
Other Rubio-related incidents involved him having Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers President Chris Crane forcibly removed from a room for trying to ask a question about the bill.
Staffer claims comparing amnesty opponents to slaveholders and telling the Spanish-language media that legalization would occur before border security and enforcement measures were implemented.
Which was not what he was saying to the English-speaking world, to put it mildly.
If that wasn't enough, Rubio also hired an attorney to lead negotiations on the Gang of Eight bill, whose other clients directly benefited from the legislation.
In the end, the Gang of Eight tried to push through a version of the bill, and Rubio voted for it, violating all of his previous promises to the conservative media around security and enforcement provisions as the first priority.
Rubio has also recently supported the resettlement of Syrian refugees in opposed efforts to strip funding for refugees, and I quote, My argument is that we can't allow anyone into this country that we can't vet, and I believe that the vast majority of refugees that are trying to come here from Syria are people we will not be able to vet.
Does common sense still apply?
Of course it does.
A five-year-old orphan, a 90-year-old widow, and well-known Chaldean priests.
These are obviously common sense applications, and you can clearly vet them just by common sense.
But what about someone who doesn't fit that profile?
There is no reliable database that we can rely on.
There is no existing government institution in their home country that we can call up and run them against.
And just please understand, from your average taxpayer standpoint, bringing in 90-year-old widows and 5-year-old orphans, well, these are not people contributing to the economy and are going to require education, social security, health care, dental care, you name it, very expensive.
If you want to help people, as we've made the case before, if you want to help people in the Middle East, send the money to the Middle East.
You can help 12 people in the Middle East for every one person you import into the West.
In January 2015, Rubio introduced the Immigration Innovation Act, which would expand five major visa categories used by Muslim migrants.
The F1 foreign student visa, green cards for foreign students, green cards for their family members, the H1B foreign worker visa, and the H4 spousal visa.
Marco Rubio in 2015.
Here's what we learned in 2013.
The American people don't trust the federal government to enforce our immigration laws, and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we first prove to the American people that illegal immigration is under control.
How's his job dedication doing?
Well, in January and February 2016, Rubio was provided the opportunity to represent Florida on a total of 26 votes.
He missed 23 of them, or 88.5%.
They voted him in to do a job, and he's just not doing it.
From January 2011 to February 2016, Rubio missed 220 of 1508 roll call votes, or 14.6%.
He missed.
You know, try having a job and don't show up 14.6% of the time, see what happens.
Now, this is much worse than the median of 1.7% among the lifetime records of senators currently serving.
But, of course, he's busy.
He's looking for the next rung on the ladder.
Marco Rubio said, I'm not missing votes because I'm on vacation.
I'm running for president so that the votes they take in the Senate are actually meaningful again.
It's a great way to praise yourself and insult the meaninglessness, supposed meaningless of the Senators already there.
For comparison, Senator Ted Cruz missed 24 out of the 26 votes, or 92.3%.
From January 2013 to February 2016, Cruz missed 148 of 1022 roll call votes, which is 14.5%.
In another comparison, Senator Bernie Sanders missed 25 out of the 26 votes, 96.2% from January 07 to February 2016.
Sanders missed 127 of 2,861 roll call votes, which is 4.4%.
Ah, rich Corinthian colleges, the kind of colleges that Ricardo Montalbombe would like to be buried in.
On June 20, 2014, Senator Rubio wrote a letter to the Department of Education requesting that they, quote, demonstrate leniency towards Corinthian colleges by allowing them to continue to receive financial aid while under investigation for a scheme involving misrepresentation Of job placement rate.
So the college said, oh, if you take this course, we have an 80% placement rate or a 90%, whatever it was.
It turned out that there was some potential errors in that calculation.
Now, of course, Senator Rubio doesn't just write letters without investigating things because that would be ridiculously irresponsible.
So he must have done some investigation about these colleges to make sure that his recommendation for leniency was fair.
Now, in 2014, entirely coincidentally I'm sure, Corinthian Colleges contributed $5,000 to Marco Rubio's Reclaim America Political Action Committee.
Ah, Corinthian Colleges was later fined $30 million by the Department of Education and closed all 28 So, this guy, Senator Rubio, is going to root out corruption,
waste, fraud and abuse in the government, but write letters on behalf of companies about to be guillotined by the Department of Education for misrepresentation of job placement rates, which is kind of important for people who are putting their life savings into trying to get their education.
Approximately $480 million in debt relief was provided for students who were, quote, harmed by Corinthian's predatory lending scheme.
In its final year, Corinthian colleges received $1.2 billion in federal student loans.
How cheap is your soul that for $5,000...
What can I say?
How is he on Common Core?
On day one, Marco will issue an executive order directing federal agencies to stop any and all activity related to implementing or encouraging Common Core.
The Department of Education, I'm very cautious about the federal government's role in establishing curriculum standards.
The federal government always ends up turning a carrot into a stick, right?
Higher education.
We do not need timid tweaks to the old system.
We need a holistic overhaul.
We need to change how we provide degrees, how those degrees are accessed, how much that access costs, how those costs are paid, and even how those payments are determined.
Rubio has proposed, quote, establishing a new accreditation process for colleges, expanding apprenticeship and vocational programs, automatic income-based repayment for all graduates.
Making loan payments contingent upon individual discretionary income, the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, which would require colleges to tell students how much they can expect to earn with their degree before they take out the loans to pay for it, and student investment plans to allow student-investor partnerships where tuition would be paid in return for a percentage of future earnings.
Yeah, so colleges are supposed to know exactly what your degree is going to be worth in five or ten years.
Yeah, that makes sense.
But why would you even bother, since your loans' repayments are dependent upon how much money you make.
So if you make more money, you just have to repay more of your loan faster.
Free market guy!
Everywhere but in his policies.
Student debt, he said, quote, that's something I'm very sensitive to because I actually owed over $100,000 after I finished my education, and I never would have paid it off had it not been for a book I wrote, which you can get in paperback.
Sales were not actually that great.
You can check, maybe the local diner is using it to prop up a table leg or something like that, but you can have a look.
With regards to gay marriage, quote, Marriage as an institution existed before even government itself.
The institution of marriage as between one man and one woman existed even before our laws existed.
I appreciate that many Americans' attitudes towards same-sex marriage have changed in recent years.
I respect the rights of states to allow same-sex marriages, even though I disagree with them.
But I also expect that the decisions made by states like Florida to define marriages between one man and one woman will also be respected.
I do not believe there exists a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Ah, great way to have it both ways.
The National Organization for Marriage, which of course is for traditional marriage, said, quote, we need bold leadership from the next president to fight back against an imperial judiciary.
Senator Rubio is merely giving lip service when he says he supports traditional marriage.
If you can't even get behind a constitutional amendment that allows the people to decide the issue.
Walker, Santorum, Jindal, Huckabee and Perry have all made strong commitments at this critical time.
Rubio and Bush, on the other hand, are simply caving.
Period.
Right now, I can't see conservatives supporting either.
With regards to abortion.
I rarely meet anyone who's willing to say they're pro-abortion.
They'll say they are pro-choice, but almost everyone I've met says that they personally disagree with abortion.
That alone tells us a little about the basic common sense the issue is built on.
Roe v.
Wade was a historically egregiously flawed decision that has condoned the taking of innocent life on a massive scale.
It is fundamentally impossible for America to reach her destiny as a nation founded on the equal rights of all if our government believes an entire segment of the human population doesn't have a right to exist.
Now, because the big question with abortion is, well, in defense of the mother's life, of the mother's health is going to be harmed by a continuation of the pregnancy, and in particular, rape or incest.
And he has said this, I personally believe that you do not correct one tragedy with a second tragedy.
I believe all human life, irrespective of the circumstances in which it came into being, is worthy of protection.
If I have to weigh the two equities here, I have to err on the side of life.
What I have advocated is that we pass a law in this country that says all life at every stage of development is worthy of protection.
So he would deny abortions to victims of rape or incest.
With regards to Planned Parenthood, he said, if you got to these centers, young women are provided very few options.
In many places they're not told anything about, for example, adoption services that may be available to them.
The idea that in essence you come in and it's already predetermined, this is what this place does, it provides abortions and we are going to channel you in this direction.
Rubio has voiced support for defunding Planned Parenthood, but didn't show up for either of the two votes on the subject.
Rubio also voted against funding stem cell research and was in favor of prohibiting human embryonic stem cell research.
Black Lives Matter and Law Enforcement Racism He has said, In this country there is a significant number, particularly, of young African-American males who feel as if they are treated differently than the rest of society.
And here's the bottom line.
Whether you agree with them or not, I happen to have seen this happen, but whether you agree or not, if a significant percentage of the American family believes that they are being treated differently than everyone else, we have a problem.
And we have to address it as a society and as a country.
I do not believe we can fulfill our potential as a nation unless we address that.
With regards to Black Lives Matter, the movement.
Quote, This is a legitimate issue.
It is a fact that in the African American community around this country there has been for a number of years now a growing resentment toward the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system interacts with this community.
It is particularly endemic among young African American males that in some communities in this country have a much higher chance of interacting with criminal justice than higher education.
We do need to face this.
It is a serious problem in this country.
I don't even know what to say about all of this.
Other than to point out that young African-American males commit crimes disproportionately higher than other groups, which may be one reason why they are interacting with law enforcement just a little bit more often.
It's not just a random chance.
Marco Rubio said, quote, I have one friend in particular who's been stopped in the last 18 months 8 to 9 different times.
Never got a ticket for being stopped, just stopped.
If that happened to me after 8 or 9 times, I'd be wondering, what's going on here?
I'd be upset about it.
So would anybody else.
Now, for those who want actual facts rather than...
I had a friend whose stories, which are just complete nonsense, they actually did a study on this because blacks were complaining that they were being stopped more for speeding.
And so they did a study and they found, yes, that black motorists were being pulled over a lot more than non-black motorists.
However, the black motorists were speeding a lot more than the non-black motorists.
In fact, they were pulled over slightly less in terms of proportion based upon how much they sped.
So...
Yes, okay, we can start talking about racism, but anybody who talks about racism without pointing out that a lot of black people could develop somewhat better habits for dealing with the world, well, they're just pandering, and I guess, as Hillary Clinton found out, can give them a landslide over their opponents.
With regards to gun control, quote, Gun laws fail everywhere they're tried.
I believe that every single American has a constitution and therefore God-given right to defend themselves and their families.
I know some of these sentences are a little bit awkward, but this is just transcripts, so I can't fix them.
The Second Amendment right to bear arms is one of America's most fundamental rights.
Indeed, it is a right that reflects our country's founding values.
Opponents of gun rights often maintain that it is outdated, but it is as important as ever, and no one knows that better than America's law-abiding gun owners.
As West Miami Commissioner in 1999, Rubio supported an amendment to ban guns in county and municipal parks and other recreational facilities.
So, you know, when Donald Trump says politicians, they're all talk and no action.
Well, he's having some resonance with people who've been following politics.
National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer, quote, Speaker Rubio talked the talk but didn't walk the walk.
He has not been a friend to gun owners.
He tried to cover himself by voting for legislation designed to allow employees to keep a firearm inside their vehicle at work.
After doing everything he could to work against it, he plays to an audience.
We will make sure our members know.
Marijuana and drugs.
Marijuana, quote, I don't think legalizing marijuana or even decriminalizing it is the right decision for our country.
He has basically refused to answer questions about drug use in his past.
Medical marijuana.
If there are medicinal uses of marijuana that don't have the elements that are mind-altering or create the high, but do alleviate whatever condition it may be they are trying to alleviate, that is something I would be open to.
You've seen how this has been abused in many parts of this country.
It's the reality that there are states now that you go in and can have a doctor write you a prescription for something that you are really just using for purposes of acquiring legally a recreational drug.
State marijuana law.
Marijuana is illegal under federal law.
That should be enforced.
I believe that adding yet another mind-altering substance to something that's legal is not good for the country.
So, with regards to other things he wants the states to decide, but with regards to marijuana, federal law trumps states' rights.
Drug crimes.
I personally believe that legalizing drugs would be a great mistake and that any reduction in sentences for drug crimes should be made with great care.
So you see, very, very concerned about drug use in the country, but was really, really behind a bill that would have given amnesty even to illegal immigrants who had been convicted of drug selling or drug crimes.
Square that circle if you dare.
Central banking.
The mortgage crisis, quote, Many of our hardworking people have seen their jobs wiped out.
Jobs they've been doing for 20 years disappeared overnight.
Many of them do things the right way.
For example, they pay their mortgages on time.
Unlike me when I was younger.
And now when the housing bubble came, they were stuck with the bill for bailing out the banks that caused it, for bailing out the people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford to pay.
Everywhere they look, they see trouble around them.
They look at Washington, D.C. Every week, Washington's creating some sort of man-made crisis for them to worry about.
With regards to the Federal Reserve, quote, The Federal Reserve Board should publish and follow a clear monetary rule to provide greater stability about prices and what the value of a dollar will be over time.
So that giant government program called Monopoly, counterfeit control of the currency, has a great chance of working if we load up the adjective cannon and fire it at an unbelievably corrupt institution called the Federal Reserve, because magic stickiness of good adjectives will reform the fact that power corrupts the human soul.
Got it.
Good job, free market guy.
Rubio said, quote, The Middle East.
Fundamental question raised by Trump in a recent debate.
Was the Iraq war a mistake?
How is this even a question?
Marco Rubio said, It was not a mistake.
I doubt very seriously that the president would have gotten, for example, congressional approval to move forward with an invasion had they known there were no weapons of mass destruction.
That doesn't mean he made the wrong decision, because at the time he was presented with intelligence that said there are weapons of mass destruction.
So it was a complete error.
He never would have got approval from Congress if the intelligence community had told the truth.
So it was a complete catastrophe.
It resulted in the deaths of a million-plus lives.
It destabilized the entire Middle East and started the tsunami of migrants going over to Europe.
But somehow, it's not a mistake.
Ah, Mr.
Heaven both ways, Rubio.
Straddling the fence, as always.
Saddam Hussein in 2010, quote, First of all, the world is better off because Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge in Iraq.
And I think we have to remind ourselves of that, in that the world is a better and safer place because Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge of that country.
You know, there are a lot of issues that society, in that society, and that nation-state faces.
But it is better off today than it was when Saddam Hussein was there.
Now, how is this objectively measured?
The half million to million people who died might not agree with you.
The population of Fallujah who've been genetically destroyed by certain weapons used by America, all the people who've had to flee the country, the people who have no running water, the people who have no access to medical treatment, I think that they would actually have said we were better off under Saddam Hussein because at least there was some stability in the country.
Saddam Hussein in 2015, quote, the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn't run Iraq.
So I think hindsight is always 20-20, but we don't know what the world would look like if Saddam Hussein was still there.
Well, you actually have some idea what the world would look like, Marco, if Saddam Hussein was there, because he'd been there for quite a while before, and the death count was actually quite considerably lower when he was in charge.
So, um...
Again, this is creating a vacuum of honesty that Donald Trump, like him or not, is rushing into.
Okay.
Boots on the ground!
It's America going back to the Middle East for further punishment and destabilization.
So, with regards to this, he said, quote, The goal is to oppose ISIL and radical Islam anywhere in the world that poses a threat to the United States.
That's what we need to focus on, not just the tactics.
Can we defeat them simply through airstrikes?
The answer is no.
They have to be defeated by someone on the ground.
Now, in a perfect world, that would be local forces, the Iraqi army, Syrian rebels, that would be Kurds, but very few people think that is going to come together in time.
There is a very real possibility that it will require some level of American ground troops to carry out this mission in the long term.
So we took out Saddam Hussein and that brought in ISIL. Now if we take out ISIL, who's next?
Beelzebub himself?
I mean, are we going to open the gateways to hell and turned out that id Software was right all along and all that weapons training taken on by 12-year-olds in the age of doom will finally pay off?
We'll find out.
I hope not.
Does he believe that there should be a permanent U.S. troop presence in the Middle East?
Absolutely.
Additional plans.
What else does he want to do?
He wants to build a multinational coalition of countries willing to send troops into Iraq and Syria.
He wants to expand airstrikes in Syria and Iraq and develop a plan to oust Bashar al-Assad from power He wants to create a safe zone in Syria, ramp up training of Syrian rebels and provide arms directly to Sunni tribal and Kurdish forces if Baghdad fails to support them.
So train a whole bunch of people in the Middle East on how to use weapons and provide them a whole bunch of weapons.
Has that ever gone wrong in the past?
Wait, that's called the whole past!
Syrian no-fly zone.
The United States should work with our allies, both Arab and European, to impose a no-fly zone over parts of Syria.
There was a no-fly zone over Iraq for many years, with the US and UK Air Forces preventing stuff from occurring, and there was boycotts and there were sanctions, and this resulted in the deaths of about half a million Iraqi children.
Huh, I wonder if any of that trauma contributed to ISIL. International relations, he has said about the Iran deal, quote, And they use
that to power their country.
There's no need to have an enrichment capability unless you intend one day weaponized the program.
It is farcical to think, even after the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th, that the United States and Russia can work together in resolving the crisis in Syria.
We simply do not share common interests, let alone values, with Russia.
President Vladimir Putin, a veteran of the KGB, leads one of the most corrupt, kleptocratic and authoritarian regimes in the world.
So you see that?
He's very much against corrupt, kleptocratic and authoritarian regimes.
They're bad, bad, bad.
What about China?
Corrupt, authoritarian, kleptocratic would seem to fulfill all of those criteria.
However, Marco Rubio says, quote, If elected U.S. president next fall, I will approach China on the basis of strength and example, not weakness and appeasement.
So he'll work fine with China, the trembling communist dictatorship that forbade its citizens to have more than one child.
But somehow Russia, well, I don't know, maybe if Putin had called him a genius, he'd feel differently.
Who knows?
Cuba, quote, Initiating a dramatic change in U.S. policy towards Cuba is just the latest in a long line of failed attempts by President Obama to appease rogue regimes at all cost.
The President's decision to reward the Castro regime and begin the path towards the normalization of relations with Cuba is inexplicable.
The regime's brutal treatment of the Cuban people has continued unabated.
Dissidents are harassed, imprisoned, and even killed.
Access to information is restricted and controlled by the regime.
That is why, even more than just putting U.S. national security at risk, President Obama is letting down the Cuban people who still yearn to be free.
And I assume this is simply playing to the Florida base.
Healthcare.
Obamacare.
Over the last five years, Obamacare has revealed the painful consequences of placing our faith in big government.
Government's ambitions may be limitless, but its abilities are not.
So what's his plan?
Everybody wants to replace Obamacare, but with what?
Well, free market argument would be, well, let's get rid of licensing for doctors.
Let's let people buy medicines themselves.
Let's let non-doctors perform particular things like midwives and pharmacists and other kinds of things.
And of course, more competition across state lines or across the country for all kinds, you know, for the insurance companies.
Lots of great free market reforms that would drive down prices, but, you know, they don't want to talk about that.
Particularly, it's going to annoy certain people.
So he says, I have worked to assemble a three-part plan to serve as a foundation for the post-Obamacare era.
First of all, We should provide an advanceable, refundable tax credit that all Americans can use to purchase health insurance.
Second, we must reform insurance regulations to encourage innovation.
Americans with pre-existing conditions should be able to find coverage through their state's federally supported, actuarily sound, high-risk rules.
Americans living in high-cost states should have the opportunity to purchase coverage across state lines.
Consumer-centered products like health savings accounts should be expanded, and under no circumstances should taxpayers be asked to bail out an insurance company that loses money.
The amount of splody head involved in this with regards to the free market would be an entire show on its own.
But of course, if you're saying we don't want to bail out insurance companies, well, people with pre-existing conditions who apply for insurance will require bailouts from their insurance companies because insurance companies don't want to sell health insurance to people who are already sick.
That's kind of not how insurance works as a whole.
You don't get to buy car insurance after.
Your car crash.
That really doesn't make any sense at all.
So, of course, they're going to have to subsidize it, but maybe he doesn't know that, or maybe he doesn't care, or maybe he's just using mouth sounds to grab votes from people.
He says, third, we must save Medicare and Medicaid by placing them on fiscally sustainable paths.
Without reforms, these programs will eventually cease to be available for those that need them.
So, magic words create solutions to mathematically impossible tasks.
Got it.
Corporate subsidies.
In 2004, Marco Rubio was deeply involved in trying to push a $60 million tax subsidy for a new Florida Marlins baseball stadium.
So, good job, free market guy!
With regards to the death penalty,"...protected legal battles in death penalty cases hinder justice for the victims and erode public confidence in Florida's criminal justice system.
Streamline the appeals process in criminal cases.
Florida should create a new, more efficient, less expensive process for reviewing criminal cases that instills more public confidence in the criminal justice system.
This could be accomplished by limiting the time convicted felons have to appeal their sentences." Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The United States cannot get locked out of 95% of all the world's consumers.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership will further our strategic goals in Asia and increase prosperity at home.
Our foreign trading partners like Japan need to have confidence that American presidents can deliver on free trade.
Once we pass trade promotion authority, we can finish negotiating a pact that will help build a network of Pacific economies based on competition, the rule of law, and free markets.
Yeah, apparently free markets all require 5,000 pages of complex legislation other than, we're going to get out of your way and let you buy and sell what you like.
And the FBI versus Apple, we've done a show on this.
Quote, They are not asking for Apple to create a backdoor to encryption.
Apple doesn't want to do it, hack the phone, because they think it hurts their brand.
Well, let me tell you, their brand is not superior to the United States of America.
And most of the presidential candidates are completely wrong about all of this.
You can refer to our presentation, which we'll link below, for more on that.
Sex crimes.
Quote, We should toughen prison sentences to keep Florida's children safe from sexual predators and expand DNA collection to include all felony offenses and sexually deviant misdemeanors.
Florida should expand the Dangerous Sexual Felony Offender Law so that all second-time sex offenders are subject to a minimum 20-year sentence.
The Act will also provide a mandatory life sentence for all third-time offenders.
It will also allow misdemeanor sex offenders offenses to be enhanced to felonies and apply the enhanced penalties to those crimes.
So, really, really tough on sexual crimes.
Oh, wait.
Scrolling backwards a little bit through my presentation, I think he was pretty much in favor of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants convicted of sex crimes, for God's sakes.
Well, he has a good response to that, which is...
On Indiana's Religious Freedoms Restoration Act, quote...
On the one hand, I think Americans, myself included, are against discrimination.
A notion that someone, because they are gay, would be denied service at a restaurant or so forth is something conservatives don't support.
The other side of the equation is, imagine how if you are a Catholic or evangelical photographer who does not believe because of your faith in gay marriage, and because of that you don't want to provide photo services for a gay marriage, should you be sanctioned by the state for refusing to do so?
I don't believe that gay Americans should be denied services at a restaurant or a hotel or anything of that nature.
I also don't believe, however, that a caterer or a photographer should be punished by the state for refusing to provide services for a gay wedding because of their religious held beliefs.
We've got to figure out a way to protect that as well.
MWOAH!
Okay, so, basically, here are two opposing positions.
I respect them both because votes.
And I have a magic wand which will turn a square circle into a circle squareness in the future at some...
Vote for me.
Just vote for me.
I'll stop talking if you vote for me.
I'll even stop using that pubescent voice.
With regards to energy policy...
Quote, Would result in the closure of coal-fired power plants in exchange for little to no environmental benefit.
I will also work to empower states to regulate energy production within their own borders.
With regards to net neutrality, again, we've got a full presentation on this below.
But he says this, quote,"...the Internet, more than any invention in history, brings together a perfect storm of free market forces, low barriers to entry, unencumbered contact between consumers and providers, and instant feedback for new ideas." Predictably, the federal government wants to crash the party.
The Federal Communications Commission's recent 332-page plan to regulate the Internet is being sold as net neutrality, which is an existing concept predicated on preventing Internet service providers from creating fast lanes and slow lanes for different content.
The internet has revolutionized every existing industry, created entire new ones, sparked untold billions of dollars in global commerce, and even spread the hope of freedom to new regions around the world.
It is one of our people's greatest treasures, which is why it belongs in the hands of our people, not our government.
What does that mean he'll do?
I don't know, but he likes words.
National Security after September 11th.
I can't ignore the fact that a lot of people I represent came to this country because of the freedoms that make it what it is.
So many of these measures that we are talking about implementing were the very same ones that were forced on the people of Cuba right after Castro took over.
The National Security Agency, the NSA. Quote, Allowing any of these programs to expire is a mistake, but that's what is happening as a consequence of the reckless spreading of misinformation and political posturing.
So, let's keep America free, and let's not have any of these intrusive government programs attract people.
Oh, are they popular?
Let's have intrusive government programs attract people.
To hell with those people of Cuba.
Eminent domain.
Quote, We're good to go.
Emmett Domain is one of these things.
You know, if you're against the government forcibly taking people's property against their wealth, you have to be against taxation.
Sorry.
You've got to see the big picture, people.
I'm not expecting Rubio or Cruz or these guys to see it, but, you know, we can, right?
I hope.
So there's some internet rumors which we're going to address because they're out there and will be asked.
On May 23rd, 1990, at 9.37pm, Marco Rubio, Angel Barrios, and another man were arrested on misdemeanor charges in Miami's crime-plagued Alice C. Wainwright Park.
Court records show that charges which included the unspecified regulation, quote, failing to observe, were later dismissed.
The park was reportedly notorious for gang violence, drug dealing, muggings, casual sex, and prostitution.
Miami Police Public Information Officer DeIrish Moss, quote, It was very dark and had lots of trees.
People went out there to smoke illegal substances, have sex, drink.
Rubio's campaign aide, Todd Harris, claimed that Rubio and Barrios were, quote, merely caught drinking beer after hours.
Miami New York Times, quote, Decades after his legal run-in with Rubio, Barrios was associated with perhaps the most notorious gay porn ring in Miami history.
Couple that with the fact that the park where Rubio was arrested was a well-known gay cruising spot and lurid rumors casting Rubio as a closeted homosexual.
Quote, today Barrios strongly denies he knew anything about the gay smut business.
He says his property management company rented the house to Flavorworks, the firm behind Coco Dorm, with the understanding it was a, quote, digital media company.
Angel Barrios, quote, we are not in the gay porn business.
We are not in the straight porn business.
We are not in the porn business.
Coco Dorm owner, Philip Bleicher, quote, I never actually even met Angel.
I feel sorry for him and his family that he's getting dragged through all of this.
He was just a landlord.
He had no knowledge of Coco Dorm's operations.
It's just one of those six degrees of separation things, I guess.
It's very funny how this has played out.
I'm happy to offer Rubio a free Coco Dorm membership.
We love to have him as a customer.
Ah, those porn moguls, always happy to help.
Angel Barrios said, quote, I'm sorry for Marchio that this arrest has come up, but I'm more sorry for me and my family.
I'm not the one running for president.
I have nothing against gay people, but this is just so far from the truth.
I have kids, and now they're reading all this garbage online.
It's insane!
I mean, okay, Rubio had an affinity for phone parties, and you could look all this stuff up online, but I think this could be reasonably described as a nothing burger.
So, Let's sum it up.
Look, if you want to control immigration into the United States, if you're tired of third world people displacing the European population of the United States and fundamentally changing the culture, Marco Rubio is not the guy.
He totally betrayed Here's voters on immigration.
And as I mentioned before, the political correctness, if not fought against, is going to be the death of the West.
Because people are like, oh, we want to deal with immigrants, so let's get a Cuban to deal with the Hispanics.
Because if a white person does it, racism, racism, racism, ah!
Right?
I mean, you just have to get over that stuff.
You have to rise above words.
And remember the lectures of those when we were young that sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.
And...
So, this guy floated up because, oh, he's a Cuban-American.
He's a Republican.
Let's get him up there to deal with immigration.
You just don't do that.
You don't do that.
Look for his past record.
Look for his consistency.
Look for his integrity.
And if you can't find it, find somebody else.
Because now, I mean, the general perception is that Trump has been...
It's going to be hired to do a job that a Hispanic was unwilling to do, which is to deal with...
And he's still, you know, the Rubio, Rubio, robot, robot, repeat, repeat guy.
I mean, he's still got these talking points that he's like the Ken doll.
In Poland, Poland, you get the same text coming out.
You know, well, first we'll secure the borders and then we'll see what Americans are willing to accept in terms of deportation.
Like, he just won't answer stuff.
He has no particular discernible principles because he contradicts himself even within the same speech.
He just says words that, you know, his words are like the guy with the earpiece listening to the safe, listening for the click.
What is going to unlock your desires?
What is going to make you like me enough to vote for me?
You know, if you want to put someone in charge of The American economy.
You can ask yourself this basic question.
Is he a guy you'd lend your life savings to?
And I think when he gets his first windfall, goes out and buys an $80,000 boat, his wife buys a $50,000 car, they end up further in debt.
That answer would be, for me at least, no thank you very much.
If you want to say, yeah, but Trump has declared bankruptcy four times, write that in the comments below.
Go on, write them!
I will find you!
I will find you somehow!
Because that is a lie that we've dealt with in a presentation called The Untruths About Donald Trump.
So basically, I'm not the first to observe this, but I think it's a fairly apt observation.
That Marco Rubio, he's the Republican Obama.
He's an affirmative action candidate promoted because he would consider to be a good human shield to deal with immigration issues.
And he totally betrayed those who promoted him for the one job you have one job to do.
And so we just have to deal with this.
We have to deal with this.
Look, We have to deal with the verbal abuse of the media in order to continue to have freedom in the West.
So, yeah, you know what, Germans?
You've got to get over being called Nazis.
It's not accurate.
It's not true.
It's a long time in the past.
It doesn't apply to you anymore.
And so you've just got to, you know, when people apply that verbal abuse at you, you've got to rise above it.
And this fear, oh, racism, if we're going to deal with Hispanic immigration, it's racist.
You just have to rise above it.
You just have to rise above it.
This nonsense is going to continue as all verbal abuse continues until it stops achieving its intended goal.
And for that, you simply have to stand up and say, no more.
We're going to deal with facts.
We're going to deal with law.
We're going to deal with evidence.
And the first person...
To use the word racist without clear and present evidence of racism is themselves.
That person is the only racist in the room.
And so to save the world, all we need to do is reject those who verbally abuse others and cloud necessary debate within American society.
This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedom Aid Radio.
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