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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined The Charlie Kirk Show to discuss the attempted assassination of President Trump, Nicolás Maduro’s theft of the Venezuelan election, Rubio’s leadership combatting potential fraudulent donations on ActBlue, and more. See below for highlights and watch the full interview on YouTube and Rumble.

On the acting Secret Service chief’s testimony to Congress:

“I’m glad to see that he said the Secret Service is to blame and isn’t putting it on the local police department. Look, my view from the beginning has been, knowing the threats that exist against Donald Trump from foreign governments like Iran, knowing that the protection that they had given him was not commensurate with the threat, [there is a lot to answer for]. And you don’t have to be a security expert to know that a sniper on top of a rooftop is the most risky of all the threats that you face in an environment like the one that President Trump was in. It should have been the number one priority in terms of securing perimeter and the like. Clearly, they failed. 

“The question is, why did they fail? And is that failure the result of an individual who’s incompetent, who sounds like they’re still on the job, or is it a systemic problem within the agency? Is it basically not good at its job, not doing a good enough job at catching things like this? The bottom line is that under no circumstances should there have been a guy on a rooftop with a sniper rifle who was known to law enforcement hours before the rally, and no one did anything about it. The answer to that is not to have some counter sniper ready to take him out after he’s fired seven or eight shots. The answer is to never let him get up there in the first place, and if he gets up there, not to allow Trump to take the stage until he’s removed. Why didn’t that happen? Why were they communicating using text messages? [They said:] ‘That’s how we communicate. That’s how we protect people.’ Look, whether you like Trump or not,…this is about protecting the country. 

“Can you imagine where this country would be right now and the damage that would have done to America had President Trump gotten his head blown off on national television, broadcast to the world? We already had a human tragedy, because someone died at that rally, and two others were seriously injured. But can you imagine what would have happened if he had been assassinated, the damage it would have done to America? This is unacceptable, and someone needs to be held responsible and accountable. We have to make sure that whatever it is that led to this never happens again. We can’t afford it as a country.” 

On Nicolás Maduro’s theft of the Venezuelan election: 

“We have to stop talking about the Maduro regime as a government. It is not a government. It’s a narco-terrorist organization that makes money off drug trafficking, is in bed with Iran, is like Iran’s foothold in the hemisphere. They do deals with Iran, with China, with Russia, with drug trafficking networks. And they’re a disaster in economics. They destroyed the country. This is a criminal organization that’s empowered itself off of a very wealthy country. The result is, eight million Venezuelans have left there in the last decade, many of them headed here…. 

“Trump put on very strong sanctions. Biden comes in and says, ‘We will lift the sanctions.’ Drug dealers convicted sitting in federal prison who are nephews of Maduro, Biden released them. He also released the number one money launderer, someone whom the Trump Administration went to great lengths to have extradited to the United States when he was apprehended in Africa. They released all these bad guys in exchange for a promise to have free and fair elections, which they were never going to do.

“They stole the elections, basically. They won’t release the precinct-level count. Think about that: ‘We’re only going to tell you the final outcome, but we’re not going to show you, precinct by precinct, the outcome.’ Everybody knows that he lost that election. And now you know the guy’s trying to hold on to power. And he’s laughing at us, and the Biden-Harris Administration got clowned again on foreign policy. By the way, we lifted oil sanctions on them because we wanted to buy more of their oil. But we won’t let our own companies produce here at home. So it’s a fiasco all the way around. 

“And it is another reminder that everywhere where socialism is always winds up with the same things: poverty and tyranny. That’s the result of socialism everywhere. Look at our border. They come from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela: all these are socialist countries. People flee those countries. Why would we ever want that in America?” 

On national security interests at stake in Venezuela: 

“The answer to what happens in Venezuela ultimately resides inside of Venezuela, with their own people, who very bravely are taking to the streets, and have, for many years, done things about it. But we have our national security interests. 

“The Maduro regime is an enemy of the United States. They buy weapons from Iran. They help Iran evade sanctions with Hezbollah. Trafficking networks are headquartered out of Venezuela: it begins there. The Chinese are heavily involved in Venezuela. The Russians are heavily involved. All of our enemies rely on Venezuela as their foothold in the hemisphere. 

“Also…we never had immigrants from Venezuela. It was one of the richest countries in the world. And now we have hundreds of thousands winding up at our border. Eight million have left the country over the last 10 years. They’ve also created this migratory crisis. By the way, you’re going to see another two or three million people leave as a result of the stolen election. So it’s creating a tremendous migratory catastrophe. 

“In addition to that, Maduro has exported this gang, Tren de Aragua, which now is in the United States after terrorizing Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. They are behind a lot of these crimes that we’ve seen here in the streets. These are criminals that were criminals in Venezuela. The vast majority of Venezuelans that are here are very decent people who don’t want to live in a socialist country. But these criminals are part of the group that’s coming in, and all of this was created by [the Maduro narco-regime]. 

“They are enemies of the United States, avowed enemies of the United States, and now, apparently, also at war with Elon Musk. I don’t know if you saw, Maduro says that Musk wants to invade with his rockets. But they’re enemies of the United States, and we need to adjust accordingly.

“Trump had put in place very powerful sanctions. He was very tough on them. He never would have released those drug dealers and cut a deal like this one, a terrible deal. They got clowned again. Biden-Harris got clowned again.”

On Rubio’s leadership combatting potential fraudulent donations on ActBlue: 

“On the back of everyone’s credit card, we get asked for it all the time, is a code called the CVV code, and it allows you to track the location of that account. WinRed uses it. Everybody else uses it. But you can donate thousands and thousands of dollars to ActBlue without your CVV code. 

“I want to pass a law that requires all these online donations using credit cards to require a CVV, so we can make sure that the person making donations is actually in the United States and eligible to contribute. Otherwise, you could have some credit card in China putting millions of dollars in small dollar donations into political campaigns in America.

“ActBlue has become a money laundering operation because they don’t take the CVV. It’s a deliberate strategy on their part. We should have a law that closes that. I’ve been trying to get it passed. As you can imagine, the reason the Democrats oppose it is because ActBlue opposes it. If they had to use that code from their credit card, their donations would go.”