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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show to discuss the pro-Hamas college encampments, Democrats’ mixed Israel messaging, and more. See below for highlights and listen to the full interview here.

On the politically motivated trials against former President Trump:

“My thoughts are that we have sanctioned other countries for doing this [exact thing] in their politics, targeting the leading opposition candidate in the next election, not with one trial, but with numerous trials. 

“[This is] one of the most liberal counties in America with a Biden-supporting judge and a Biden-supporting prosecutor who doesn’t even go after violent criminals, but has charged [Trump] on this ridiculous bookkeeping charge that they’ve extended to a felony by finagling federal law for reasons that I can’t even explain.

“On top of that, the president is smeared every single day by witnesses in this trial, like Michael Cohen, and if [Trump] responds, he gets fined and now threatened with jail. All the trials are ridiculous. All of them. But this one in particular is the most ridiculous. It makes the country look like a third-world banana republic, like a kangaroo court democracy. It’s an outrage. It’s a complete and total outrage. 

“If that trial was brought in any other jurisdiction in America, in just a normal, regular, middle-of-the-road jurisdiction, there’s no way they’d get a conviction. There is not a single other person in the world whom this prosecutor would have charged with this same set of facts other than Donald Trump. So, the whole thing is an embarrassment to the country and an outrage, and I think people see it for what it is.

“I think even Democrats are embarrassed by it, which is why they barely talk about it. The commentators giggle, even though they can’t cover it. I guess someone’s texting out what’s happening. But beyond that, the average everyday, hard-working person sees it for what it is.

“[The trial is in] Manhattan, where you have a district attorney [with whom] if you kill a couple people, you might not even be charged. You’ll certainly be out on bail awaiting a trial, and then [he will] drop the charges to something lower. You’ve got a city where this district attorney has notoriously not gone after violent criminals and given people the eighth and the ninth chance to go out and re-offend. But they bring this charge…. People know there’s no way, with a straight face, to argue that this trial was legitimate or is anything other than political.” 

On America’s future under President Biden’s policies:

“Just think about immigration. Ten million people in three years. How many are going to come in over the next three or four and a half years? 

“Look at the damage he’s done to us around the world, at what happened with Afghanistan. Since that moment, Ukraine’s been invaded, Israel’s been attacked. A lot isn’t being covered every day, but China is constantly harassing the Philippines and Taiwan. That could break out at any moment. North Korea is firing missiles again, of greater and greater lethality. 

“The world’s gone nuts here at home. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe we would see pro-Hamas sympathizers of terrorism taking over college campuses and flying the Palestinian flag over our campuses and disrupting graduation ceremonies, finals, and classes.”

On Democrats appealing to anti-Israel demonstrators:

“The issue now that they’re focused on is Hamas and Palestine, and their hatred of Israel. But this is the same movement, the same group of people that are constantly arguing that the U.S. is an evil country of colonizers that were imperialists. That this is a nation founded on white supremacy, that the world is divided between victims and victimizers, and that we are the victimizers. So, it’s an anti-Western, anti-U.S. sentiment that is spread by the same people who, tomorrow, will call for something else. 

“At its core, they hate the country. They want America destroyed. They don’t view this as a special country worth saving. They view it as an inherently terrible one that needs to be torn down and rebuilt into something else. That includes not having borders and things of that nature. 

“That movement is an enormous liability because it has become a core of the Democratic Party. A lot of Democrats don’t agree with them, but that’s where they get their activists….”

On the Biden Administration’s split message on Israel support: 

“You’ve got one element of the Democratic Party that wants us to support Israel. And you’ve seen some of these members of Congress sending letters and criticizing it. Then the other element are the people in his campaign, the people staffing different levels of the State Department and his political advisors that are saying, ‘We’ve got to do something to appease this group because if this group stays home and doesn’t vote for us, we’re going to lose the election.’ 

“So, he’s trying to have it both ways. [President Biden] wants to go around saying, ‘I’m ironclad with Israel,’ but then he tries to appease them by saying, ‘But I’m going to cut off their weapons if they go into Rafah,’ or, ‘I’m pro-Israel, but I don’t like Netanyahu.’ So, they’ve tried a lot of different strategies to try to have it both ways here. This is not the kind of issue you can have both ways. You’re either with Israel or you’re with the terrorists. You’re either supporting Israel’s right to destroy this group that did these horrible things, or you’re not, you’re in favor of that group surviving and coming back and doing it again in the future.” 

On the pro-Hamas encampments on college campuses: 

“If you allow groups to set up camp, put up tents, and take over the buildings, word gets out, and people are going to gravitate there. They’re going to say, ‘This is the place we need to go because they’re allowing them to stay.’  Then that encampment builds, then these professional agitators come in, guide them towards what’s the next step, and they hand out guides: ‘This is how you get arrested. This is how we resist. This is how we break into buildings. These are your rights. This is what you need to do. This is how to cover your face and no one can take a picture of you, then not hire you in the future when you try to get a job.’ 

“Some of the biggest issues here have been in New York, Los Angeles, and a little bit in Washington, D.C. These are big cities where a small group of students can become a magnet to bring in these professional agitators, who are part of this whole anti-American movement, who are always looking for a cause to latch onto. They join and, suddenly, you’ve got these encampments going on, and you’ve got straight-up violence and chaos.

“These are not protests. These are riots. These are unlawful demonstrations, disruptive and harmful. [There is] evidence that there are outside agitators. Who’s printing all this stuff, making all the signs, [supplying] these fancy tents they’re in? But even if every person in those encampments was a student, and at most of these universities. you’re talking about a very small percentage of the student body that’s participating…, they’ve caused tremendous harm to these institutions. For the life of me, I don’t know why anybody would want to go to one of these schools right now.”