NOTICIAS

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined America’s Newsroom to discuss President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress, the border crisis, and more. See below for highlights and watch the full interview here.

On President Biden’s refusal to recognize the border crisis as a national security issue: 
 
“It’s not surprising that one of the biggest failures of the first 100 days is something that they’ve ignored. I don’t think there’s any dispute that it’s a crisis. I don’t think there’s any dispute that it was something that was caused by the decisions that [the Biden Administration] made. 
 
“When you take over the presidency and you announce, ‘I’m going to do everything the opposite of the previous president,’ that is a signal to people that it’s going to be easier to get in, almost permissive. And whether that’s true in law or not is irrelevant; that’s the perception. And that perception leads to actions.
 
“These are desperate people living in horrible conditions. We sympathize with them, we really do, but we can’t have an uncontrolled situation on the border, which is what it’s become.
 
“He doesn’t highlight it. He kind of glosses over it, and it doesn’t surprise me that he’s passed it onto the Vice President too, by the way. It’s something he doesn’t want to be associated or identified with directly.”
 
On President Biden’s shift from center-left politics to an embrace of the progressive agenda: 
 
“That’s where the energy in the Democratic party is. The energy, the activism, the money all comes from the far left of the Democratic Party; that’s their base. And so that’s where he needs to move to. Now, maybe he’s not a natural in that spot, but it’s irrelevant because he’s become a vessel for them to do things and that’s why you see his policies move in that direction. He’s also, by the way, populated his administration with people that come from the far left. So irrespective about what his personal feelings or his history in politics may be, it’s his actions that matter now. 
 
“And look, a lot of the things he talked about yesterday are things that I think most Americans agree with. I personally believe we need to have more pro-family policies — it’s the most important unit in the entire society. And that’s why for years I’ve been proposing pro-family policies. But I think they have to be the right ones. Just saying we’re going to spend a trillion dollars on this doesn’t mean you care more; it means you’re going to spend more of other people’s money — taxpayer money —  and run up the debt. Look, there’s going to be a lot of spending involved no matter what we do, but it should be on the right things and it should be measured…” 
 
On the recent backlash to commonsense voting regulations: 
 
“The bottom line is that I think that the vast majority of Americans have no problem with showing an identification before they vote. They do it all the time to board an airplane; they do it to check into a hotel room. They do it to get into office buildings in many cases. Where I live, you can’t even go to the garbage dump without showing I.D. to prove you live in that community and pay taxes there. This is one example of the kinds of things that people look at and say, ‘What’s the big deal,’ but [Democrats] make it all sound like it’s somehow designed to repress votes.” 
 
On Twitter’s hesitation to respond to racial slurs used against Senator Tim Scott following his rebuttal to the Joint Address: 
 
“There is no doubt there is a double standard. I’ve seen Senator Scott go through this a number of times already. It’s ugly. The problem here is not that Twitter doesn’t take it down. The problem here is that they take it down when it’s against Democrats or the left, but they don’t do it or are slower to do it when it’s against conservatives or the right. That’s the problem and that’s the hypocrisy here. It’s unfortunate; I’ve seen it. 
 
“One thing we learned for sure is that the left is for tolerance — except for tolerance of anyone who disagrees with them or doesn’t say what they want. Then they’re intolerant. That’s not tolerance.”