News

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Martha MacCallum on Fox News where he discussed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that the U.S. House of Representatives will launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. A lightly edited transcript of Rubio’s comments are below.

Martha MacCallum: “I want to get your reaction first to this decision by Nancy Pelosi today.”

Rubio: “Well first of all, the term impeachment has lost all meaning. It’s thrown around cavalierly. Impeachment is an extraordinary measure — it’s an extraordinary remedy. It basically means we’re going to throw out the result of the last election. It’s divisive, it divides the country deeply, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy. While you’re working on something like that you’re not getting anything else done, like funding the government as an example, which is something we should be doing around here.

“And so, the question becomes, if you’re going to do something that extraordinary and that divisive, shouldn’t, before you go out running your mouth about it, you have some facts before you? Shouldn’t you wait, for example, until the transcript of this call comes out? Shouldn’t you wait until after we talk to the Director of National Intelligence, after we talk to the Inspector General, after potentially we get a chance to see, as I hope we do, the complaint that’s been filed?

“And you saw, and I’m not saying all the of members, but some of the members that came out in the hallways after that decision, they were saying well we need to do this because I don’t like the president’s policies. Not liking the president’s policies are not grounds for impeachment. They’re grounds for campaigning against him next year.”

Martha MacCallum: “What about what he did admit to — the president. He said yes he did bring up Joe Biden and the possibility of an investigation on the phone with him, and obviously he’s the frontrunner, at least at this point, in the 2020 election. Do you have any problem with him bringing that up with the Prime Minister of Ukraine?”

Rubio: “I don’t think he should’ve done that. And I’ve said that. But that’s not what they’re saying. What I’m hearing voices out there saying is not only did he bring it up, but there was a quid pro quo. Well, there’s no evidence of that. Maybe there will be, but right now there isn’t. Look this is not something you throw around lightly. You know, we’ll see what the facts are. I’m not taking a position one way or the other. The position I’ve taken right now is we want to know facts. We want to see the transcript of that call. We’re going to wait till we get more facts. We have both of those relevant individuals coming in the Intelligence Committee that I sit on and that’s what this should be based on.”