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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined America’s Newsroom to discuss the planned attack on President Trump and rising violence from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. See below for highlights and watch the full interview on YouTube and Rumble.

On whether left-wing rhetoric contributed to the planned attack on President Trump:

“If you repeatedly say someone is going to be the next Adolf Hitler, the next Mussolini, an American dictator—there are publications that have actually put out front page stories that depict Trump looking like Hitler—if you do these sorts of things, the overwhelming majority of people that see that are going to say, ‘We better vote against this guy,’ but there are enough lunatics and nut jobs out there who are going to take the next step and say: ‘This guy is truly evil. If this guy is truly dangerous, if our democracy and our system of government is going to be wiped out if this guy wins, I need to take this guy out.’ 

“We need to learn more about this individual. We need to learn how he got there, why the perimeter wasn’t secured, who he was, and what was behind it. But I think we know enough about some of the things he’s posted to say that he clearly was influenced in some way by this rhetoric about Trump being this dangerous dictator in waiting.” 

On whether President Trump should be protected as if he were a sitting president:

“It’s a Secret Service decision, and if they need more resources, I bet you they’d find support up here to do it. There’s a few reasons why. First, he’s not just a candidate. He’s a candidate that now has been the target of not one, but two real attempts on his [life]. It was a potential attempt on his life in this case, because the guy didn’t get a shot off, but he would have taken a shot had he had a shot. 

“The second thing is, we also know, and this has been publicized, that we have a nation state—in Iran—that is actively seeking the assassination of Donald Trump in retribution for the Soleimani strike. The two assassination attempts in the heat of this campaign, combined with the known threat of foreign agents who are seeking his assassination and have actually said so publicly, raise the level of security he needs to be having beyond just that of a candidate.” 

On questions surrounding President Trump’s would-be assassin, Ryan Routh:

“He had the money to buy those tiles that were there like a shield. He had the money to travel to Florida and apparently sustain himself for some period of time. He had the money to find a car. Right now, we know it had stolen tags, but we don’t know whose car it is or how he got ahold of it. He had the money to buy weaponry. These are questions that need to be answered. 

“I think it’s good that the state of Florida is going to be involved. I think the more eyes are on this, the better. We have a second set of investigators that are going to look at the potential same set of facts, maybe discover new facts. But there are a lot of questions to answer relevant to two things. The first is, how did this happen? Was he working with someone? We don’t know, but we need to learn that. The other is the copycat problem. 

“As I speak to you now—and I say this with no great joy—there are potentially dozens of people out there that, given the opportunity, may do the exact same thing, watch the sort of coverage about this and try to replicate it somewhere down the line. It’s quite possible that even as I speak to you now, there’s someone plotting to do the exact same thing to Donald Trump or somebody else. 

“We need to learn how these people work, because we need to understand the warning signs to get ahead of this. Imagine if somebody would have driven by that street and noticed there was a guy hiding in the bushes eight hours before Trump got there. That would have avoided a lot of these problems that we’re now facing. He would have been apprehended a lot sooner.” 

On rising violence from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua: 

“I believe I’m the first person here in Washington—maybe in American politics—that warned about this gang all the way back in January or February of this year. The reason why is, Venezuelan migrants were telling me about it. This originated as a prison gang inside of Venezuela. Then they spread to Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Colombia, neighboring countries, and basically joined up with other gangs to conduct these operations, particularly targeting Venezuelan migrant communities in those countries.

“It was inevitable, just a matter of time, before they joined the migratory flow and entered the United States. Now we are seeing them in communities in the United States, where they are following the same patterns that they follow in these other places: murder for hire, extortion, human trafficking, drug running. They are basically a criminal organization and a very violent one. Their members are coming into the United States because there’s more money to steal here and more people to go after here. 

“This is a threat that’s been building since February. Initially, when we raised it, we were told that we were exaggerating and that it wasn’t true. We’re now seeing it play out in real time and in places you wouldn’t expect, such as Aurora, Colorado. We initially saw this in New York and in Chicago as well. But I think it’s going to continue to spread wherever there’s targets of opportunity. They particularly like to target migrant communities. That’s where they first like to target. But obviously, crimes spread beyond that—the purse snatching and anything else they can make money off of.”