News

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined The Benny Show to discuss the rise of extremism in the Democratic Party, the conviction of former President Trump, and more. See below for highlights, and watch the full interview on YouTube and Rumble.

On the rise of extremism in the Democrat Party: 

“We’ve always had people in America that wanted higher taxes, more government. You know, the traditional 80s, even 90s liberalism versus conservatism. That’s an ideological debate. It happens all over the world, and it’s happened in this country. But what’s happened over the last 20 or 30 years [is different]. 

“I always assumed right up until very recently that everybody agreed this was a great and fantastic country. Our history isn’t perfect. It’s just better than anybody else’s. It’s extraordinary. There’s no comparison to America in the history of mankind, in 5,500 years of recorded human history. When you add it all together, it’s very special. I assumed everybody agreed on that premise. Yes, there were some Marxists on the far left that argued America was this terrible place that needed to be rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt, but that was on the fringes. It took me time to fully realize how embedded in the mainstream that fringe idea had become. 

“That’s now become, I don’t think it’s the majority of Democratic voters, but I think it’s certainly the majority of people with power and influence in the Democratic Party. We are seeing it play out, whether it’s in the case of Hamas or everything else. If you want to rise in Democratic politics, you must come from that line of thinking or at least be acceptable to them. I think that knocks out a lot of people that could potentially be a candidate that appeals to the broader group of Americans that have things like common sense and love of America. I think it’s really become very difficult for someone in the Democratic Party to rise unless they come from that universe. 

“In the case of Joe Biden, that’s not been his history. But I think actually Joe Biden is the perfect president for people that view America as evil and needs to be dismantled, because he has no political base, and he’s in rapid decline. It’s perfect for them, because the less powerful, the less on top of it the president is, the more the people underneath him, the career bureaucracy and staff and everybody else who is making the decisions, the more powerful they become. 

“He’s had to populate his White House and his administration with people from this fringe that has now become the mainstream on the left. To them, he’s perfect. He’s the perfect cutout. They don’t have to worry about a president saying, ‘Hey guys, maybe this goes too far.’ He’s just going to read whatever index card they hand him right down to the instructions.”

On the conviction of former President Donald Trump by a New York City jury: 

“These are political trials. When you were born in a country, raised in a country, or fled a country that had political trials, you recognize them before the people in politics recognize it. I don’t think we need to reach them as much as we just need to be there for them to reach us, because I think people have come to that conclusion. It is from them that I have gotten this idea that this is comparable, not just to what you saw in Cuba after Fidel Castro took over or what you saw in the Soviet Union for a long time, but what you see in many other parts of the world where political trials are normal and accepted. 

“I say this to you as someone who’s very involved in the Western Hemisphere. One of the reasons why so many of the people who get elected president in these countries do everything possible to stay in power, like, for example, trying to change the constitution so they can run for reelection, is because they know that once you’re out of power, what usually happens to former presidents in those countries when the other side takes over is, not that you go open a library or go on a speaking tour, but that you get put on trial and go to jail. So, they don’t want to leave power. Political show trials are very common in dysfunctional republics and democracies around the world. People who come from those countries recognize it, and they don’t like it. There’s no other way to describe what’s happened here…. 

“When Obama got elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, these people wanted to dismantle the country. They legitimately believe that this whole notion that America is exceptional and great is a myth. In fact, [they believe that] America needs to be fundamentally dismantled and rebuilt into something else. Those people believed that, finally, they had the majority they needed in American politics to put their plans in action. They begin waging war on every aspect of our traditional life. Then Donald Trump happens, and they go into complete meltdown mode. 

“You could see it almost from the minute he took office. I remember, right after he was elected, there were these women that looked like time travelers from the 60s in the streets screaming, walking around with weird signs saying obnoxious things and so forth. You could tell almost from the beginning there was something else behind this. What was behind it is, Donald Trump interrupted and stood in the way of what they thought was now an inevitable and irreversible permanent change in our demographics and our politics. 

“Now, they will do anything. There is nothing they will not do to keep him from running for office. What they’re counting on is Republicans who want to continue to be considered good, decent people: ‘Normal Republicans,’ as they like to say. There are a lot of people that want to keep the membership card to that club. That’s what they’re counting on. But the bottom line here is, I think [former President Trump] said it really well the other night. Sean Hannity asked him, ‘Do you plan to go after them?’ He says, ‘No, I don’t, this has to stop.’ I think that’s exactly the right answer. This has to stop. 

“They are the ones that have unleashed lawsuits to bankrupt him, indictments to try to put him away. They have forced him to stand trial before a judge that donated money to Joe Biden in a ‘Stop Republican, Stop Trump’ effort…. This guy has not one case, but multiple cases involving Trump before him, and then he gives these ridiculous jury instructions. We can get into the micro of how unfair that trial was. But I think if you step back and look at the big picture, from going to court to getting kicked off the ballots, getting him indicted four times, suing him, impeaching him twice, the hoax about him having been coordinating with the Kremlin to become an illegitimate president that took over, it’s unprecedented. 

“No political figure in American history has ever faced that barrage of using the Congress, the courts, and the media to target him and to prevent Americans from being able to elect him president of the United States. I think we have to understand, we’re operating in a very different environment now, against people who will stop at nothing to get their project to dismantle and remake America back on track. They will stop at nothing.”

On former intelligence officials casting the Hunter Biden laptop story as disinformation: 

“The actual official intelligence community at that time was run by John Ratcliffe. He came out and said, ‘I don’t know what these people are talking about.’ The media and the public largely ignored him and instead relied on 50 former intelligence officials who take the fact that they were once in government and still have clearances [and use that to make partisan claims]. In my mind, [their clearances] need to be revoked, because to me, what they did was abuse those clearances. 

“The worst thing you can say is to imply to people, ‘I know something I can’t tell you, but believe me, it’s really bad, okay?’ It’s the worst thing you can do, because you can’t defend yourself against it. That’s what these guys did. If you have 50 former intelligence officials—not current, you couldn’t fire them—who used the credibility or the standing that that former title gave them to say to the American people, ‘This stuff looks like classic disinformation, a Russian disinformation operation, this laptop must be fake,’ [people are going to believe them]….

“The worst part about it, however, is that on the basis of these formers, despite the official DNI, the one who was in office at the time, saying, ‘This is not true,’ the media, Twitter, Facebook, and others decided to block the story out. To the extent they talked about it, it was as disinformation. In many cases, if you posted or reposted the New York Post story, they would shut down your account, or they would block viewers from seeing it. There was an active effort to keep that information from becoming widespread in the minds of Americans. To the extent that it leaked out, it was defined on the basis of these ‘experts’…. 

“In America, people have a First Amendment right to say things that aren’t true in the political sphere. They do it all the time. But—I [addressed] this in a public hearing the other day, and I do it all the time in our closed hearings—the biggest threat to our intelligence agencies is the loss of credibility in the minds of a substantial percentage of Americans because of the actions of people that leave the agencies, go out, and become political activists by abusing their titles, such as Clapper, Brennan, and all these guys that are out there…. 

“It’s really unfair to these people that are out there all over the world, working at these agencies and embassies and in tough places, doing work. They don’t care about any of this [partisan politics]. This is not their thing. In many cases, they’re frustrated that they’re not allowed to do more. They want to protect us against our enemies. But there’s another group of people that rise to the leadership of these agencies—in many cases appointed, they’re not even career—who are thinking to themselves, ‘I need to be popular among the right group of people, so that when I leave, I’ll get put on a corporate board, I’ll be asked to be on the faculty somewhere and teach, I can monetize my years in service.’ One of the things that gets you entry into that club nowadays is to be anti-Trump and to say, ‘He’s going to be a dictator, he’s a threat, he’s a Russian asset.’ 

“It’s very damaging what they did, apart from being outrageous. I think that collusion between these formers, who were liars, and the media to keep that story from the American people in the month preceding the election interfered and influenced the outcome of the election. If that story had been widespread, I think you could argue thousands and thousands of people would have voted very differently.”

On societal issues in America:

“Are we truly, as some of these people argue, this inherently evil country founded on racism, genocide, bigotry, and xenophobia? Or are we the greatest nation in the history of the world that’s worth, not just preserving, but expanding to even higher greatness and continuing to progress, which has been the American experiment? Embedded in this challenge is that, because of some of this craziness and lack of common sense, we have some deep cultural problems in our country which the government can’t solve.

“Without strong families, without strong communities, without a clear sense of right and wrong and good and bad, we have big problems. You can make something illegal, but unless it’s instilled at a young age, it won’t matter. 

“We have big problems in this country, but America remains, by all historical comparisons, a pretty prosperous and free place for the average, everyday person. We have 13 or 14-year-olds who are living in the freest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. They don’t have bombs being dropped over their heads. But they’re committing suicide and have rates of mental health issues at record levels. We’ve got to get to the bottom of that. We have kids that are growing up, not coming out of poverty, coming out of the middle class, even upper-class homes. They see somebody being assaulted, and the first thing they do is take a video of it and laugh, not interfere and say, ‘No, we can’t do this.’ 

“It’s just thing after thing that’s happening. You realize that there’s a deep rot going on at the core of our culture because we have destroyed, we have undermined, we have demonized many of the institutions that 5,500 years of human history taught us work. Family is important. Morality is important. We’re not going to tell you what faith to belong to, but a faith that teaches you that human life has dignity and that you should respect other people, care for the poor and the less fortunate, be compassionate and forgiving, and to love your neighbor like yourself, these are positives. Why wouldn’t we want movements like that influencing our culture and society? Instead, we’ve demonized them.

“There’s a lot to unpack there. Much of it is not the work of the government, but it certainly sets the tone for some of this, and when the government is waging war on those institutions, it makes it harder to cure that disease within the spirit of America, not easier.”