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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News to discuss today’s events at the U.S. Capitol. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here.

On today’s events at the U.S. Capitol:
 
“Terrible. I think it’s one of the saddest days in our modern history, probably in our history. I think they’re high-fiving in Beijing, and the Chinese look at this and are very happy about it — it bolsters their claim that we’re falling apart and they’re the country of the future. 
 
“I think it’s inexcusable. Completely 100% inexcusable. I don’t care what the motivations are. Obviously people are going to get arrested and we’re going to learn more about who was there and what this was all about. 
 
“I think it’s been tragic. And I want to say something. I want to thank the Capitol Police officers. We know a lot of these people personally — we walk by them every single day — who had to go out there and do this and were really undermanned and overwhelmed by this at one point in time.
 
“None of it is an excuse. Now I do think that one of the challenges we have is we have a serious crisis of confidence in this country. There is now literally no individual or institution in this country that can speak definitively about anything. That’s not an excuse for any of this, but it explains some of the things that create an environment that led to this all across the board. And the media is shocked that they have zero credibility — they’re viewed largely as biased — and you have the censoring of news stories before an election by social media companies. And then you have these questions that in normal times people would look at and be able to work through, but in that environment of a lack of confidence it really sparks up. And I think those things need to be answered because democracy doesn’t just depend on having elections, it depends on people’s confidence in those elections and their willingness to abide by those results. They’re interrelated.
 
“I don’t know why the Senate can’t do Watergate-style, Titanic-style hearings. We could take testimony, subpoena records. It wouldn’t change the outcome of this race, but it would give people the clarity — the answer. And by the way, the changes that we need to make, when I was in Florida in the legislature, I served on a task force after 2000 that made a bunch of changes to the mechanics of our elections and I think we can do that for the country.
 
“I certainly think there’s two things that have to happen. First, we have to firmly say that this stuff is not acceptable. It just can’t happen. We look like the third world. This is stuff that you see in another country. We’ve got tin pot dictators out there lecturing us and mocking us on their Twitter feeds and online. That stuff can’t happen.
 
“The second thing I would make of this is at some point everyone has to step back here and realize that this has been brewing and building for a while. And it’s all across-the-board. And there are real factors out there that are contributing not just to the erosion of confidence and trust in America, but some of the rhetoric…there is no such thing as a country in which half of us are very happy and the other half is very unhappy. It just can’t work. None of us is going anywhere. So we’re going to have to figure out a way to coexist. That’s always been the challenge in America — of a country that covers this vast continent, so diverse, and that’s what our system is about. And that’s what law and order is about, allowing us to have those disputes without violence, but with passionate debate.”