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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined The Sean Hannity Show to discuss Israel’s war against Hamas, terrorist sympathizers in America, and challenges to U.S. global leadership. Listen here and see the transcript below. 

On the pro-Hamas protests across American college campuses:

“It’s an unmasking of what’s happened in higher education in particular. Also, places like TikTok have become cesspools of this kind of misinformation and indoctrination. It’s actual brainwashing. 

“It’s reflected in the polling, where Americans under a certain age are amazingly…pro-Hamas in their views of what’s happening in the region. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. It’s a constant bombardment of information and anti-colonial messaging and all this other ridiculousness. This is what we’ve paid for. 

“The most shocking part about it is you go out there, and you see some of these people that stand for every liberal cause, LGBTQ rights and this, that, and the other. None of those rights exist in the places that they are defending.

“They’ll obviously say, ‘We’re not pro-Hamas, we’re just pro-Palestinian.’ But Hamas came across the border and slaughtered a bunch of Jews in Israel, and they didn’t start protesting. Once the bombardment [against Hamas] started, they came out almost immediately as a counter-reaction. So that’s very disturbing.”

On the senator’s resolution urging the Biden Administration to revoke the visas of terrorist sympathizers:

“We know that a lot of the people out there, whether it’s putting stuff on social media or the like, are not Americans. They are here on a student visa. They’re here as a visiting professor. They are guests in the United States. 

“Our laws say very clearly, ‘If you are a supporter of or if you are encouraging others to support a terrorist organization, you’re not supposed to get a visa.’ It’s logical that once you’re in the country, and you do that, you lose the visa. The administration should identify as many of those people as they can, revoke those visas, and remove them from the country. They shouldn’t be here. 

“I thought that was pretty common sense. Unfortunately, a Democrat, probably on behalf of the majority leader, came down and blocked [my resolution]. We’re going to keep trying, because I think it makes all the sense in the world. 

“They’ll argue about the First Amendment. It’s funny. They’ve now discovered the First Amendment, they’re now anti-censorship, and so forth. But this is not about the First Amendment. I’m not saying that people don’t have a right to hold these views, as repugnant as they are. What you don’t have a right to is a visa. 

“The visa has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It is a pass or permit to be in the United States for a defined period of time. I’m not saying people should go to jail. I think they should be removed from the country because they support a terrorist organization, and there is no constitutional right to a visa. There is no constitutional right to visit the United States from abroad….”

On the uptick in attacks from Iranian proxies on U.S. personnel:

“In addition to Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran has a series of Shia militia groups [in Iraq and Syria] that are total agents of the Iranians. They get their direction from them. They get their weapons, they get their training, they get intelligence [from them]. They coordinate operations [with them]. Those groups do nothing without Iranian support. 

“For the last year and a half, they really haven’t been targeting Americans. We have a small contingent of American troops in Syria and in Iraq, primarily on the counter-ISIS, counterterrorism mission in those countries. Then, they attack us suddenly. From one moment to the next, you see this huge uptick. It is pretty clear that these groups are attacking us at Iran’s direction. 

“Iran has basically decided that they can hide behind these groups, and they can say, ‘We didn’t attack you, these groups attacked you.’ But we know these groups are basically agents of Iran…. The only way to keep these groups from opening the front and not just targeting us in Iraq and in Syria, but potentially U.S. troops in Kuwait, U.S. troops stationed in Jordan and other parts of the region, is for there to be deterrence. 

“Iran needs to know that if these guys attack America, America is going to hit Iran. We don’t want that to happen. But they believe there is a threshold of Americans they can injure and potentially even kill and not have it come back on them…. I think the president…, what he has to message pretty clearly to them is, ‘You can’t hide behind this facade anymore, if these groups attack us, we’re going to blame you for it, and we’re going to respond accordingly.’ 

“It is the only way to deter this from happening. Otherwise, they are going to unleash these groups against us, and we’re going to find American troops being besieged across the Middle East, wherever they’re stationed, and not just in Iraq and Syria.”

On challenges facing Israel’s military:

“None of these groups can defeat Israel militarily. What they can do is harm their economy, make life unbearable, and kill a lot of Israelis. If their barrage of missiles comes across from Hezbollah with these [precision-guided] missiles that they have now from Iran, they can overwhelm the Iron Dome system. Israel has to decide, ‘Do we protect military sites or civilian sites?’ It gets really hairy pretty quickly. That’s why everybody hopes that doesn’t happen, although it could.”

On challenges to U.S. global leadership from China, Russia, and Iran:

“[China, Russia, and Iran] are primarily united by a desire to redo the world so that it’s less friendly to America and more friendly to their worldview. I think they’re also incentivized by the belief that we have an administration that’s trying to play nice with China and not confront them too much on trade. [The Biden Administration is] always looking to do some sort of climate deal with [the Chinese] through John Kerry. 

“[Iran has also] been able to infiltrate people into our government. [Robert] Malley, the guy that was the negotiator with the Iranians, we now know was, at a minimum, a sympathizer of the Iranian regime and their point of view of the world. 

“I think the same is true with our withdrawal from Afghanistan. That was going to happen. But the way it happened, it was so chaotic, it did not look like the work of a great power. It looked like the work of a collapsing once-great power in decline.

“At the same time as all this is going on [in the Middle East, the Chinese] rammed a Filipino boat yesterday in the Pacific over their false claims to a certain piece of land. We are being tested now in multiple places by nations that not only want to displace us, but think that America is in decline, and that they can get away with it. 

“They can predict how [Joe Biden] is going to respond, and they’re not too worried about it. In the case of Iran, it’s most certain that they believe that Joe Biden, at all costs, wants to avoid a conflict with them. They think that their runway and their wiggle room is a lot more than it should be, and that just invites us being tested. 

“This axis is real. It’s not like on a piece of paper like NATO. But these are groups that share intelligence now. They share weaponry, and they coordinate tactics…. It would not surprise me to now see greater tests from China in the Asia-Pacific region, because they think we’re distracted by what’s happening in the Middle East.”